04/01/10 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And we're going to go ahead and start off the show with our first guest today.
It's our news editor at Antiwar.com, Jason Ditz.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you doing this morning?
Good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Alright, so, what is the deal with the Iraqi election?
Everybody won, nobody won, what happened?
Well, nobody won, that's for sure.
Former Prime Minister Alawi got the most seats in the election itself when they released the results last week.
But whether he's going to be able to keep those seats or not seems to be a very different matter.
Because Maliki is already contesting the results and he's ordered some people arrested that won seats.
Oh, well that's a pretty good way to make sure that you get the plurality in the parliament, huh?
Yeah, it doesn't seem to matter so much who got the seats when the election results were announced as who has the seats when the parliament finally sits for the first time, which I believe comes in June.
Now that's funny, because I think our constitution forbids the president from arresting members of congress for anything but breaches of the peace or felonies, that kind of thing, just to prevent that kind of deal.
But I suppose that wasn't written into the Iraqi constitution.
It doesn't appear so, and it's not even clear what they charged any of these people with.
They just sort of, the morning after the election results were announced, some of the people that were on the list as having won seats for Alawi just suddenly started getting harassed by police.
And one of them got arrested and a couple went into hiding and there was one that I'm still not sure if they found, just basically disappeared entirely.
Did Maliki not have the ability to rig the election beforehand instead of this blatant, obvious, sore loser, bad sportsmanship type thing he's going through now?
It seems like he certainly had the ability to, but I'm not sure he thought it was necessary to.
Most of the people in his bloc seemed to think that they were going to win fairly handily.
I think they were looking at the Iraqi National Alliance of Third Place Finishers as their chief opponent, because it's a majority Shiite nation, and they're the two parties that are polling well in all the Shiite areas.
And they were beating them handily, so they figured they would win the election handily, but Alawi has really taken so much of the Sunni population under his bloc, and they even made inroads into some of the mixed Sunni Kurdish areas that he really ended up with a much larger number of seats than anyone expected.
Well, and that's an important point right there, too, because it means that he's really pissed the Kurds off, because the support that he got from the Kurds, I don't mean the Kurds, the population, I mean the Kurds, Barzani and Talabani and their political factions, they've got to hold it against him, that he just cost them a bunch of votes, and he would need a coalition with them in order to actually get the Prime Minister chair, right?
Well, not necessarily.
It seems like the Kurds could get cut out entirely from an Alawi government.
If they were able to get the Iraqi National Alliance on board, and the minor Sunni parties that still have a few seats on board, they would be able to form a, not particularly strong coalition, but enough to hold a majority and form a government.
You say that would be in alliance with who?
The Iraqi National Alliance.
If Alawi could make an alliance with Sadr.
Right.
Ah, yeah.
Well, let's talk all about Muqtada al-Sadr here.
This guy's been in Iran for the last couple of years, I suppose, fearing a drone strike or something, and yet he still is the kingmaker in Iraq, isn't he?
Well, yes, and he's always been influential among his followers, and he's always had kind of a disproportional influence on a certain segment of the Shiite population, and after this election, his party's always been a few-seat, loud minority party, and they just ran the election so much better than anyone expected that they really dominate the Iraqi National Alliance now, instead of just being a minor player in it, and he's got, essentially, the right to pick the next prime minister now.
Let's go back in time a little bit to, well, even five years ago, or even, I guess, four years ago, whatever.
Basically, if I remember this right, Jason, the Supreme Islamic Council, which is the Hakeem family group, which was the richer and more pro-Iranian of the Shiite political factions in Iraq, basically made a compromise with the Sadrists that said, well, let's both support a Dawah party candidate, and that way, you know, Sadr had his militia, the Mahdi Army, the Badr Brigade was there in service of the Supreme Islamic Council, and yet Dawah didn't have an army, and they said, well, we'll split the difference, and they supported, first, Jafari, and then Nouri al-Maliki.
So Maliki, I mean, at that point, at least, had the support of both of those different factions, and yet, it seems like, well, actually, I was reading, I followed a link in one of your news pieces the other day, and it led back to something from last August, I think, where you were talking about how it was that Maliki and the Hakeem clan of the Supreme Islamic Council had a falling out, and that was why he went and created his own party, which apparently was a political mistake now, but that was how he separated himself from the Hakeem clan, right?
What was going on?
It was more that they separated themselves from him.
They did quite well in the regional elections last year, when people were picking provincial parliaments, and I think the Supreme Islamic Council saw their influence waning, and Maliki's growing, and figured that they'd better separate themselves from him, so that they didn't end up being a sort of irrelevant minor party underneath the Dawah party.
But ironically, having separated themselves from the Dawah party, Sadr's now gained so many more seats than they did in the elections, that there's a minor irrelevant party under Sadr instead.
Well, and part of that, too, is that Hakeem died, and his son is not quite the charismatic leader that Abdul Aziz al-Hakeem was, is that right?
Right.
His son is really, he's never been a particularly political person, and he doesn't seem to be very savvy about building coalitions, and it seems like his father's death might have taken the Supreme Islamic Council more or less with it.
Well, so now, what about Sadr's relationship with Maliki?
Because I guess he's now said he wants a nationwide referendum on the prime ministership?
Yeah, the Sadr bloc is actually organizing a private referendum on who should be the next prime minister, but Sadr and Maliki haven't gotten along in quite some time, and there were even reports, although Maliki denies it, that he had an arrest warrant for Sadr written out days before the election, which, in retrospect, seems to be a pretty big mistake, because now Sadr basically gets to select who the next prime minister is.
Well, okay, so what's Sadr's relationship with Alawi then?
Are they going to be able to work something out?
And I guess as a parenthesis to that, is Alawi still a CIA agent?
Did America just fix this election?
Well, that I'm not sure.
It seems like Alawi would, on his own, be pretty pro-US, and it seems like the US did sort of speak out in his favor when all the political bannings ahead of the election were going on, but if Sadr is in the government, it doesn't seem like any government is going to be able to be too friendly with the US.
All right, well now, I guess the Patrick Cockburn theory, which is the one that I go by, I try to because it's the brightest side of the story as far as I can tell, is that, at least up until this point, Maliki's position as prime minister has completely depended upon his alliance with Sadr.
For one.
Among other factions as well.
But Sadr, more than any, on the Shiite side, has always pushed for American withdrawal yesterday.
And so now it looks like Sadr has gained even more in power.
And I wonder whether you think there's a possibility that whether it's the Alawi faction or Maliki, a new prime minister, but from Maliki's party or whoever, that the new prime minister, whoever he is, is going to have to stick by that Status of Forces Agreement and really kick the Americans out, not just pseudo-kick the Americans out, by the end of 2011, maybe even sooner.
Yeah, that certainly seems to be the case, that any government, assuming one gets formed at all, is going to be insisting on the Americans sticking to the Status of Forces Agreement.
The real danger, though, is that there's going to be so much bad feeling and so much of Maliki having Alawi's people arrested and Alawi's Sunni allies taking to the streets in protest, that they're going to just devolve into another civil war, which could force the U.S. to decide that they're going to stay even longer.
Yeah, well, something's always forcing them to stay longer one way or another.
But do you think that's a real danger, that it's going to break back into war?
I mean, the population of Iraq certainly is sick and tired of it.
It seems like if you were to say, what's the easiest way to start another civil war in Iraq, this is it.
I mean, the Sunnis had been so beaten down over the past several years that they were kind of resigned to their fate as a politically irrelevant minority group.
And having fueled Alawi's seeming victory in this election, they were sort of revitalized as a force in the nation.
And now if it ends up that Maliki starts arresting Sunni MPs to try to take their majority away, it seems like if someone was trying to start a civil war, they couldn't do any better job than this.
Of course, it seems like Sauder has it within his power to preempt Maliki there and form a coalition with Alawi's group.
And it is the case that at least back in 2004, in fact, as late as the end of 2006, Muqtada al-Sauder was working on an agreement for what they call the Government of National Salvation that was going to be basically Kurdish, at least one or the other of the major Kurdish factions, along with the Sauderists and the Sunnis, Iraqi, never mind ethnicity or religion.
All we all agree on is we want the Americans out and a strong centralized Iraqi state.
And that didn't take.
And of course, there was a lot of killing, you know, in 2006 and 2007.
And the Mahdi Army certainly had a part to play in that.
But I wonder if it would be really possible for them to work that alliance.
And then, you know, it sounds terrible to sit here and think that the best case scenario is a Sauder-dominated government in Iraq.
It's certainly horrible for the people of Iraq.
But then again, it seems to be the most likely scenario for forcing an end to the American occupation, which is the highest priority on my list.
And Sauder certainly seems to be in the position that he could make that happen now.
He's become far more politically powerful than he's ever been.
And he's arguably the most politically powerful person in Iraq, even though he's not in Iraq.
He's in Tehran at the moment.
Well, and he's been in Tehran, which, you know, that's another interesting thing about this, Jason.
You know, if you go back to, I don't know, 2004, 2005, even 2006, it was a pretty clear split between the Supreme Islamic Council that wanted, well, I guess all the Sauderists and the Supreme Islamic Council guys agreed on kicking the Sunnis out of Baghdad and taking Baghdad.
But then the question was whether they were going to have a strong national government or whether they were going to push for the federalism that really, I think, was defined in the Constitution.
And to the Supreme Islamic Council types, that meant, you know, more or less southern Shiastan in alliance with Iran.
And it was Sauder who said hell no to that.
Sauder was the nationalist and was, I guess, you know, had relationships with the Iranians or whatever, but certainly was not toe in their line that they wanted a separate, independent Shiastan.
He was pushing for all this nationalism.
Then again, that's been years ago now.
And he spent all this time in Iran since then.
So who knows exactly how strong of an alliance he would have between Baghdad and Tehran at this point.
Well, I think his call for a referendum is in part to give him cover in case he decides to go for a more nationalist government in Iraq.
Because it seems like it's the Iranians' preference, certainly, to have a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, even if it's not particularly strong.
It's just all the Shiite religious parties allied together to make what would be a fairly narrow majority.
But they could make it happen.
Whereas I'm not sure that's Sauder's preference right now.
I guess, you know, when your headline says the post-election mess could take months to unravel, it could also be, you know, tomorrow, right?
If Sauder just announced he wanted an alliance with Ali, I mean, they're not going to have a nationwide referendum on the prime minister, right?
Well, I don't think it would be that simple.
For one thing, Alawi would have to be the one that's able to try to form the government first.
Even if Sauder says he wants to form the government with Alawi, Maliki can basically tie this up in court, and tie this up by having Alawi's people arrested for months on end.
And it seems like he's inclined to do that.
So, I don't think, even if everyone had decided to settle this that way, I don't think it's really going to get settled in a matter of days or weeks.
It seems like a minimum it's going to be sometime this summer, and it could well stretch into the fall.
Now, the generals have been talking about staying, am I right?
Yeah, the plan B they've been talking about is to slow the drawdown or to stop it entirely, in case they're worried that violence is going to break out again.
Yeah, I'm trying to find the tab here.
I thought I had it from, oh here it is, somewhere in here, from Foreign Policy.
It was actually David Petraeus' spokesman there, Tom Ricks, formerly from the Washington Post.
Oh yeah.
Who's now a PR guy for the Pentagon over there.
And he had a piece, yeah here it is, Odierno requests more combat forces in Iraq beyond the Obama deadline.
This is from February 25th.
And, of course, the so-called deal that would have all American combat forces out of the country by this August, and would leave only 50,000 non-combat forces somehow, was always a lie.
And they said it was a lie from the very beginning, right?
Didn't Bob Gates go on TV and explain on Meet the Press on Sunday morning that, well what we're going to do is we're just going to rename combat troops, everything but combat troops, and leave them there.
But even then it's supposed to be, no matter what, at the end of 2011, that is supposed to be the deadline.
And yet more and more they're talking about what air bases in Kurdistan, sounded like Hillary Clinton during the campaign.
Yeah, it seems like the August deadline, to the extent that it was ever going to happen, has been dead for a few months, basically since the election was delayed.
They were talking, this election was supposed to happen in January, and they were talking 60 days after the election was resolved, they would start withdrawing the combat troops in earnest to get down to that 50,000.
It doesn't seem like the election is going to be resolved within 60 days of August anyway, at this point.
So, let alone to have time to draw down 45, 50,000 troops to get it down to that number.
But the real question right now is, is still the end of 2011, which that's still 20 months in the future, so they have a lot of time to sort of say everything.
Like last year, they were saying everything was going according to plan on the August drawdown, when in reality, of course, it wasn't.
Now they can say everything's going according to plan on the 2011 drawdown, but I don't think there's much chance that, at least if the U.S. had their way, that they would completely leave the nation in another 22 months or however long.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that Status of Forces Agreement was supposed to go to a nationwide referendum last July, and that's never going to happen at all.
Right.
The problem with that referendum was that, under the Status of Forces Agreement, you have to give the United States 12-month notice to get out.
And the referendum itself would take about six months to formally send them the results and get the U.S. to acknowledge the results.
So even if they held the referendum today, at best the U.S. would be out in, or would have to legally be out by early October of 2011, which is only a couple of months before when the agreement would end anyway.
Well, and you know, when our dear leader gave his Camp Lejeune speech a little more than a year ago, there were giant loopholes right there in the text of the speech that nobody could miss.
And you could drive an entire occupation through the whole thing.
Well, we're going to leave counterterrorism forces in the country.
That sounds like combat troops to me.
And what counterterrorism?
The only terrorists that were ever in that country were people who came to help the Iraqis fight against the American invasion and occupation.
Abu Nidal died in his sleep or something a couple of years or a year before the invasion even took place.
There was no Al-Qaeda in the country at all until we invaded.
And then it was the Iraqi people who marginalized them anyway, and they were nothing ever more than one or two percent of the insurgency, even at its height.
And then, of course, there was no mention whatsoever of the 100,000-something contractors in the country.
Just forget about that.
Just no mention at all.
More than 100,000 people working on government contracts there.
And then no mention either of the embassy.
That's the size of the Vatican.
And also no mention of the so-called force protection for the counterterrorism forces, for the contractors, for the embassy.
It sounds like we're still talking about 50,000-something people forever, minimum.
Well, it certainly seems to be that that 50,000 is going to be there indefinitely, and the embassy certainly isn't going anywhere, and the large number of troops that they're going to have stationed in that embassy aren't going anywhere.
But the Status of Forces Agreement is going to come to an end at some point, and whether it gets extended or not seems to be very much the question of how the U.S. is going to have legal cover for all those supposedly non-combat troops that'll be participating in all those combat operations.
Well, I guess really the question comes down to who comes into power.
I mean, after all, they did create a majority-rule kind of country there, and if it's the soldierists, then I think he's the kind of guy who would throw down the gauntlet and say, look, either get out of my country or you start this war all over again, and good luck with that.
Because, frankly, when America invaded, most of the, you know, they rolled up from Kuwait, and most of the Shiites stood back and watched the Americans invade.
The only time there were really organized wars against, or, you know, pitched battles against anti-occupation Shia-based insurgencies, that is, Mahdi Army-based insurgencies, was twice in 2004, and then, what, in the spring, late spring, early summer of 2007, and then that was it.
They didn't fight, because they were the ones inheriting everything.
And if America, and this is why, you know, not to give, you know, to defend Paul Bremer and Douglas Fythe and them, but basically they had no choice but to debauthify the government and fire the Iraqi Army, because the Grand Ayatollah, the highest-ranking Shiite religious cleric on earth, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the spring of 2004, said to the people, look, if you believe in God, I need you to go outside and demand one man, one vote.
And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis went outside and demanded one man, one vote.
And that was him basically saying, you want to start this war all over again, or are you going to hand this country over to us?
And really that's how this, that's the only way this war could end, would be if Muqtada al-Sadr took that same stance, you know, sometime coming up soon.
Other than that, it's going to be Hillary Clinton's dream come true, and a permanent occupation from now until long after our lifetimes.
Well, that certainly seems to be the case.
The real question, though, is what happens to Sadr's anti-American views once he gets into power?
It seems like a lot of people talk about having the U.S. leave, but once they get into power and realize that that government is supported in fairly large measure by having 50 or 100,000 occupation troops backing them up, suddenly they decide that the U.S. isn't such a big deal to have there.
That's true.
Although, boy, oh, boy, would that make the world's biggest hypocrite out of Muqtada al-Sadr.
I mean, Maliki has been a so-called pragmatist, saying, look, we've got to do what we've got to do for the time being, and whatever, this whole time.
That's hardly the position that Muqtada al-Sadr has taken.
Yes, but Muqtada al-Sadr has never had any real political power.
He's always had sort of a popular power among his followers, and he's certainly had some religious authority, but he's never really had any meaningful positions in the government.
He's been mostly a vocal opposition faction or a fairly quiet part of the government.
All right, now, real quick before I let you go, let me ask you about Kurdistan.
I read a piece, maybe I didn't even read it, maybe I just read a headline, that said that the Kurds are still a long way away from being able to take Kirkuk, no matter how many Arabs they've kidnapped and forced out of their homes there.
They still don't have the ability, really, to do their bogus referendum, call Kurdistan a Kurdish city and take it.
And yet, I don't even know if that's really right, but anyway, Michael Hastings was on the show a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him what he thought the chances were that Kurdistan would end up breaking off, not just being an autonomous part of Iraq, as it has been really since 1991, but really break off into an independent state, and he said something on the order of 99.9% chance that that's going to happen.
Jason, what do you know about that?
Well, it certainly seems like they want to break off, but right now it seems like their top priority is to annex more of the territory just to the south of the Kurdistan Regional Government's current control.
I mean, Kirkuk and Mosul and the areas around them, if they split off Kurdistan as an independent nation and those cities remain in Iraq, they're going to be forever out of their grasp.
So it seems like, if nothing else, they're going to have to stay out of convenience as long as they have ambitions on taking those northern cities.
I've got to let you go, because it's time for Philip Weiss.
But I really appreciate your time on the show today, and I especially appreciate the work that you do at Antiwar.com.
I depend on you.
Well, thank you.
All right, everybody, that's Jason Ditz.
You can find what he writes at news.antiwar.com, keeping track of, well, pretty much everything important in the whole world, all day, every day.news.antiwar.com.
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