Postcolonial Iraq

Farsakh Comment on Future Vision

2007-03-18T15:46:00.000+01:00

Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas may have affirmed that they want a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but it may be more promising to return to a much older idea. There is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not (...) Unfortunately, the article's "sense of decency" - or rather Le Monde diplomatique's - doesn't allow for talks about the consociational form of democracy at the heart of the present vision. So you'll better read the Manifesto or any article by Prof. As'ad Ghanem to make quite sure this time it's not about Fatah's old "secular and democratic state."

Time for a Bi-national State

By Leila Farsakh
March 19, 2007

There is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not created a basis for a democratic Palestinian state as President George Bush had imagined: The Palestinians are watching their territory being fragmented into South African-style bantustans with poverty levels of over 75%. The area is heading to the abyss of an apartheid state system rather than to a viable two-state solution, let alone peace.

There have been a number of recent publications proposing a one-state solution as the only alternative to the current impasse. Three years ago, Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor in the 1970s, wrote that the question is “no longer whether there is to be a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel, but which model to choose.” Respected intellectuals on all sides, including the late Edward Said; the Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara; the Israeli historian Illan Pape; scholars Tanya Reinhart and Virginia Tilley; and journalists Amira Haas and Ali Abunimeh, have all stressed the inevitability of such a solution.

The idea of a single, bi-national state is not new. Its appeal lies in its attempt to provide an equitable and inclusive solution to the struggle of two peoples for the same piece of land. It was first suggested in the 1920s by Zionist leftwing intellectuals led by philosopher Martin Buber, Judah Magnes (the first rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Haïm Kalvarisky (a member of Brit-Shalom and later of the National Union). The group followed in the footsteps of Ahad Ha’am (Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, one of the great pre-state Zionist thinkers).

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Ghanem Comment on The Future Vision

2007-02-12T18:43:00.000+01:00

Dismantling the tyranny of the majority (pdf)

By As'ad Ghanem*
January 29, 2007

/.../
I believe this document can be defined as an historic event in the annals of the Palestinians in Israel and of their relationship with the Jewish majority and establishment. This is the first time a representative national body of Palestinians in Israel has prepared and published a basic paper that describes both the existing situation and the changes that are needed across a broad spectrum of Arab life: relations with the Jewish majority, the legal situation, land, social and economic issues, the status of civil and political institutions, etc. The document was written by activists from all political tendencies among the Palestinians in Israel (including some who later opposed the positions adopted), and delineates the achievements necessary for defining the future relationship between the majority and the minority in the state of Israel.

In my view, the document is based on three theoretical principles that constitute the foundations of human social, political and cultural development for at least the past two centuries. First is the principle of human rights: the document addresses the fundamental rights of the Palestinians in Israel as human beings--to economic and social development, women's and children's rights, to live without violence, etc.--and demands their realization.

The second principle invokes civil equality: the basic democratic right to equality before the law and the demand to annul laws, structures and symbols that alienate the Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure Jewish superiority. And the third principle is that of the right of communities to self-determination, including the autonomous right to manage specific areas of life such as their own education and cultural and religious affairs. In order to realize these foundations, the document's writers demand the implementation in Israel of a consociational system. This would replace the existing liberal system that is exploited automatically by the Jewish majority and that, indeed, constitutes a "tyranny of the majority" in which, in the name of liberal democracy, that majority takes draconian steps against the Palestinian minority and its fundamental rights.

Jewish reaction representing the Zionist consensus was expressed to a significant extent by journalist Tommy Lapid, Professor of Law Amnon Rubinstein and historian Professor Alex Jacobson. They display a well-known nationalist readiness to recognize the right to self-determination of a single group in a pluralist reality, a demand anchored in the extreme nationalism that in the twentieth century was represented by Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and many additional countries and that ultimately led to disasters of historic dimensions. This model ignores the compromises reached in Spain after Franco, in Belgium, in Canada since the Quiet Revolution and in severalother instances in which a pluralist reality facilitated solutions based on mutual recognition and the right of self-determination and self-rule for more than one national or ethnic group within a single political framework.
/.../

* Dr. As'ad Ghanem heads the Government & Political Philosophy Department at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa and is chair of the executive committee of the Ibn-Khaldun Association. He was an active participantin the preparation of the document described here.

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Rekhess Comment on The Future Vision

2007-02-12T18:12:00.000+01:00

On "Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel"
Tel Aviv Notes (pdf)

By Elie Rekhess

December 19, 2006

Several position papers on the future of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have recently beenissued. The most striking is "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," prepared bythe National Committee of the Heads of Arab Local Councils and endorsed by the Supreme Follow-up Committee of the Arabs in Israel. What has gained the most attention is its national-historical perspective on three issues:

First, the document rejects the nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state which, the authors argue, perpetuates the inferior status of its Arab citizens. The present system, says the document, should be supplanted with a "consociational democracy," namely a bi-national state model, based on full power-sharing between the two national groups in government, distribution of resources, decision-making, proportional representation and the mutual right of veto on crucial decisions. The country's national symbols, such as the anthem, flag and emblem, would also be modified.

Secondly, the Committee's paper calls for full equality in the civic, national and historical spheres, including, inter alia, equal rights of immigration and citizenship quotas, a demand which may imply the elimination of the "Law of Return" allowing Jews to freely immigrate to Israel. Special reference is made to the socioeconomic differences between the Jewish and Arab sectors, particularly with regard to land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, social change and education.

Demands for equal rights are intertwined with those insisting on the endorsement of the Palestinian historical narrative and recognition of the Arabs in Israel as an indigenous minority. The document calls for an official cknowledgement of the 1948 Nakba ("calamity"; referring to the defeat and displacement of the Palestinians). "Internal refugees" who remained in Israel and whose land was expropriated should be allowed to return to their original lands, and Waqf (religious endowment) property, administrated since 1948 by the Israeli government, should revert to the control of the Muslim community.

Thirdly, the paper suggests structuralinstitutional changes, specifically self-rule (autonomy) in education, religious and cultural affairs, and the media, in order to guarantee the unrestricted development of the Arab minority’s specific collective identity. It also proposes the establishment of an elected, country-wide representative body for the Arabs in Israel.

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The Future Vision Of The Palestinian-Arabs In Israel

2007-02-04T09:46:00.000+01:00

The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel (pdf)

Report by

The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel - 2006

Introduction

In order to collect various versions in the self-definition of our entity, our relation with the rest of the Palestinians and our relation with the State and to connect them to create a firm integral homogeneous vision, we, the Arab Palestinians in Israel, should have a clear self-definition that includes all the political, cultural, economic, educational and social aspects.

As the chairman of the High Follow up Committee for the Arabs in Israel, I have invited a group of Arab intellectuals (see attached list of names) to a discussion aiming at crystallizing a strategic future collective vision of the Palestinian Arabs citizens of Israel.

I express my gratitude to this group for its efforts and commitment in the march that lasted for more than a year during which four long meetings were held. Documents attached to this paper are the outcome of this march. They are also the outcome of a collective effort during which its content was discussed and ratified. The core of the work was subject to summaries of researches written by some participants in the group, proposing general trends for a change required in the future of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

This outcome is a property of the group, the High Follow-Up Committee and the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. These documents focus on affiliation, identity and citizenship of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. They also focus on the legal status, land and housing, economic and social development, educational vision for Arab education, Arab Palestinian culture and on the political and national work of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

It is worth mentioning here that the group did not have the chance to discuss other major issues in detail.

The importance of this work lies within the discussion which will follow, as a publication of this document. It is not necessary for all representatives of political streams and parties, represented by the Follow-Up Committee, to approve of this document. Rather, the main goal is to spark the public discussion concerning thefuture of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

Shawqi Khateeb
Chairman

/…/

The Palestinian Arabs in Israel and their relation to the State of Israel

/…/

Israel can not be defined as a democratic State. It can be defined as an ethnocratic state such as Turkey, Srilanka, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (and Canada forty years ago). These countries have engaged their minorities in the political, social and economic aspects of life, in a very limited and unequal way. This comes amidst a continued and firm policy of control and censorship which guarantee the hegemony of the majority and marginalizing the minority.

The principles of an ethnocratic system include:

1. The control of an ethnic group on the State system.
2. Focusing on ethnicity (and religion) and not citizenship, as a basic principle of the distribution of resources and abilities and undermining the “people” (citizens in general).
3. A gradual ethnic process of politics based on ethnic classes.
4. A permanent state of instability.
5. The ethnocratic logic provides tools for understanding societies that prefers one certain group over others; it also dominates the dynamics between different ethnic groups.

To maintain the ethnocratic system, Israel has implemented several rules concerning the Palestinian Arabs in Israel:

1. Cutting all identity relations between the Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Islamic Nation. Israel has tried to create a new group of “Israeli Arabs”.

2. Preventing Palestinian Arabs in Israel from keeping relations with their brothers in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and, thePalestinians refugees.

3. Opposition of organizing the Palestinian Arabs in Israel in any form that can be of a contradiction to the aspirations of the Jewish majority and the state in terms of parliamentary representation and preventing them from exercising any non parliamentarian political activities of public struggles.

4. Opposing the Palestinian Arab leadership attempts to building a vision adverse to consolidate the Status of the Arab minority in the Jewish state which ultimately accepts the Jewish control of the state, its resources and abilities.

5. Forcing the Palestinian Arabs in Israel to accept resource allocation on a basis of ethnicity rather than citizenship. This aims at maintaining the Jewish superiority and the Palestinian Arab inferiority in Israel.

The Palestinian Arabs in Israel are in need of changing their status. While they are preserving their Arab Palestinian identity, they need to obtain their full citizenship in the State and its institutions. They also aspire to attain institutional self-rule in the field of education, culture and religion that is in fact part of fulfilling their rights as citizens and as part of the Israeli state. They also seek to obtain full equality with the Jewish majority.

Such self-rule within the State poses a system based on Consensual Democracy. A system embodies the presence of two groups, the Jews and the Palestinians. Such system would guarantee real resource, leadership and decision making participation.

The Palestinians in Israel should demand the following, from the State:

1. The State should acknowledge responsibility of the Palestinian Nakba (tragedy of 1948) and its disastrous consequences on the Palestinians in general and the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel in particular. Israel should start by rectifying the damage that it had caused and should consider paying compensation for its Palestinian citizens as individuals and groups for the damages resulted from the Nakba and the continuous iscriminating policies derived from viewing them as enemies and not as itizens that have a right to appose the state and challenge its rules.

2. The State should recognize the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as an indigenous national group (and as a minority within the international conventions) that has the right within their citizenship to choose its representatives directly and be responsible for their religious, educational and cultural affairs. This goup should be given the chance to create its own national institutions relating to all living aspects and stop the policies of dividing between the different religious sects within the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

3. The State has to acknowledge that Israel is the homeland for both Palestinians and Jews (the Israeli future constitution and state laws should reinforce this point by adding an introduction paragraph). The relation between the Palestinians and Jews in Israel should be based on attainment of equal human and citizen rights based on international conventions and the international relative treaties and declarations. The two groups should have mutual relations based on the consensual democratic system (an extended coalition between the elites of the two groups, equal proportional representation, mutual right to veto and self administration of exclusive issues).

4. Israel should acknowledge the right of minorities in line with international conventions. It should admit that the Palestinian Arabs in Israel have a special status within the institutions of the international community and are acknowledged as an
indigenous cultural national group enjoying total citizenship in Israel. It should also acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel has international protection, care and support according to international conventions and treaties.

5. Israel should refrain from adopting policies and schemes in favor of the majority. Israel must remove all forms of ethnic superiority, be that executive, structural, legal or symbolic. Israel should adopt policies of corrective justice in all aspects of life in order to compensate for the damage inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs due to the ethnic favoritism policies of the Jews. The State should cooperate with representatives of the Palestinian Arabs to search the possibility of restoring parts of their lands that Israel confiscated not for public use. Israel should also dedicate an equal part of its resources for the direct needs of the Palestinian Arabs.

6. Israel should acknowledge the rights of the Moslems to run their affairs concerning the Waqf (Islamic endowment) and the Islamic holy sites. Israel should no longer be in control of the Islamic and Christian holy sites and acknowledge their right of self-rule the as part of the collective rights given to the Palestinian Arabs.

7. Israel should acknowledge the right of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel of social, religious, cultural and national continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic Nation.

The legal status of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel

/…/

1. The shared citizenship rights:
In order to guarantee the desired legal protection of the shared citizenship rights in Israel, the legal system should adopt the anti-discrimination laws in all aspects of life individually and collectively. This legal system should also include the creation of an independent commission (or commissions) for equality and human rights. Such commission should focus on guaranteeing the implementation and surveillance of anti-discrimination laws. It should also adopt the international conventions pertaining to the protection of human rights and be obligated to them, such as the international convention combating all forms of discrimination, and those pertaining to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and those calling for equality of women and child, so that the terms of these conventions would become an indivisible part of the internal law enforced in the country.

2. The collective –national rights:
Concerning collective national rights, we believe that Palestinian Arabs in Israel, as a collective and as individuals, should have equal participation in all public resources including the political ,material and symbolic resources. Such participation would be the cornerstone of building an equal and just society, where this society would include equal relevance and opportunity for each group on the basis of democratic principles of consensuality and power sharing. On the level of legal protection of the national collective rights we note a number of basic legal axes that must be guaranteed in order to crystallize the desired legal status of the Palestinian Arabs :

1. An official recognition of the collective Palestinian Arabs existence in the State, and their national, religious, cultural, and language character, and recognition that they are the indigenous people of the homeland.

2. Recognition of the Palestinian Arab rights of complete equality in the State on a collective –national basis.

3. Guaranteeing dual language system of both Arabic and Hebrew.

4. Guaranteeing effective representation and participation of the Palestinian Arabs in decision making procedures within the official institutes and the activation of the veto right in matters concerning their living.

5. Guarantee of self-rule of the Palestinian Arabs in the fields of education, religion, culture and media and recognizing their right to selfdetermination with respect to their collective life complementing their partnership within the state

6. Equal distribution of resources, such as budget, land and housing.

7. Appropriate representation on a collective basis in the state system.

8. Guaranteeing the right of the Palestinian Arabs to have open and free relations with the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab Nation.

9. Guaranteeing the rights of the Palestinian Arabs in issues obliterated in the past such as the present absentees and their right of return; the Islamic waqf (endowment); unrecognized Arab villages and land confiscation.

10. Official acknowledgment of the historical injustice against the Palestinian Arabs in this country and against the Palestinians in general and to guarantee for ending this injustice and correcting its continuous disastrous consequences. In order to obtain the desired legal status of the of the Palestinian Arab citizens and to face challenges that associate us during our struggle we propose to reinforce the existing efforts and further develop the legal, cultural, and social-economic status of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This is to be actualized by crystallizing and developing legal and strategic policies to serve and push our causes on the short and long terms. We can have a clear future vision in order to obtain equality and partnership and combat national discrimination and negligence within the state.
/.../

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Original arabic >>

Related article:

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Hizbullah's two republics

Consociational Hezbollah

2007-01-07T10:55:00.000+01:00

The 1943 National Pact agreed on between Lebanese patriotic confessional leaderships is different in nature from the 2003 "consociational" Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) imposed on Iraqis by occupation forces. Equally, present demands of the Lebanese opposition, pressing for a formation of a government of national unity and/or anticipated elections, are different from those in post-invasion Iraq. The Lebanese demands are in accord with existing constitutional laws, and therefore not expressed in some "insurgent"-style or Sistani-style; the Lebanese opposition isn’t calling to arms and the overthrow of the pro-Western Siniora government, and nor is it calling for a direct popular majoritarian vote for the purpose of forming a transitional government and writing a new constitution.

In their domestic political struggle, Hezbollah and its allies -- (Shi’i) Amal Movement, the (Christian) Free Patriotic Movement, and minor allies -- aren’t playing on their military and demographic assets; they’re playing the democratic game proper:

Hezbollah’s Democratic Demands

By Mohammed Ben Jelloun
January 15, 2007

By demanding a national unity government and a veto power over major decisions, Hezbollah and its allies are sticking to the consociational (multi-confessional) letter and the republican (patriotic) spirit of the Lebanese constitution.

In his Friday speech on December 1, 2006; that is, on the first sit-in day in the ongoing Lebanese Anti-Government Protest, Sheikh Abd Al-Ameer Kablan, the vice president of the Shi’i Council in Lebanon, made it clear that the opposition’s demands were of a "consociational" nature; "we are for consociational participation not majority/minority participation," he said. Unlike many commentators, indeed, Hezbollah and its allies do not contest the constitutional system in force in Lebanon; they don’t question what Stephen Zune (December 6, 2006) sees as a "colonially-imposed" and Robert Fisk (November 13, 2006) as a "French conceived" confessional representation system. To the contrary, Hezbollah and its allies are championing Lebanese-style democracy.
Equally, against all sorts of worries, fear, suspicion, and warnings about Hezbollah, this strengthened party in the aftermath of the July-August war did not advocate any majoritarian change in the system of representation – even less a violent overthrow. In fact, Hezbollah embraced radical forms of consociational democracy instead.
[...]
It will no longer do to give precedence to investigating a particular political crime over national unity, national security, and national reconstruction; it will no longer do to give priority to tracking still hypothetical murderers of former prime minister Rafik Hariri over protection against destroyers of Lebanon’s infra-structure and murderers – the assassins beyond any reasonable doubt, though powerfully protected – of more than 1.000 Lebanese civilians.
Full article >>
Read also: Hizbullah's Two Republics

The articles above cite a document signed Ali Fayyad, a politburo member and director of a think tank closely affiliated with Hezbollah, who says "the consensus rule became Hezbollah’s motto" following what the party saw as an attempt by the majority side in government to monopolize the decision-making process:

Hezbollah and the Lebanese State. Reconciling a National Strategy with a Regional Role

By Ali Fayyad
August 15, 2006

[...]
The Hezbollah’s insistence that Lebanon’s political system is a democratic consensual one based on the rule of 'con-sociationism' as stipulated by the Preamble of the Lebanese Constitution cannot be understood merely as a political response to a particular moment of deep divisions. It reflects a deep transformation in Hezbollah’s understanding of the requirements of the Lebanese political system as well as its appreciation that internal stability is central to every national project if it is to succeed in its pan-Arab and Islamic dimensions. Hezbollah’s adherence to the consensus-building principle (…) sees that the majority rule creates an unstable balance of power and is inadequate in the long run to protect the interests of all. The movement seeks therefore to invest its strength and capacities to promote balance rather than to achieve domination in the Lebanese structure.
[...]

Clearly, Hezbollah’s consociation concept is not synonymous with federation; it is rather far from federation. Nasrallah sounds here like warning of an "Iraqization" of Lebanon:

Nasrallah’s Victory Rally Speech

September 22, 2006

[...]
We announce from this place, with the blood of our martyrs; we announce, precede matters, and say, any talk in Lebanon about partition is an Israeli talk, any talk in Lebanon about federalism is Israeli talk, and any talk in Lebanon about cantons is Israeli talk. We the Lebanese, our fate, decision, and wish to God should be to live together in one state. We are against its partition and division. We are against its federalism and division into cantons.
[...]

Israel's Arab community and the bi-national state

2006-12-29T21:18:00.000+01:00

Israeli Arabs seek autonomy and veto on government decisions

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
December 6, 2006

Israeli Arabs are demanding cultural, religious and educational autonomy, and the right to veto government decisions on national issues that affect them.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Tuesday released a document entitled "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel." It stipulates that Israeli Arabs will demand that during the next two decades Israel become a binational state alongside an independent Palestinian state.

Monitoring Committee officials say the document is a cornerstone in the history of the Israeli Arabs, as it was produced by the Monitoring Committee and sponsored by the local authorities committee, two bodies representing all the political factions of the Arabs in Israel

"Our main objective is to ignite the spark of the political debate on the future of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," said Shawki Hatib, chair of the Monitoring Committee.

The document demands that Israel recognize the Arab community as a national minority with the right to be represented in international forums. Jewish Israelis need not see it as a threat, Hatib said.

The document has eight chapters, each outlining the vision regarding land policy, economic development, education, etc. The chapter about relations with the state does not say that Israeli Arabs recognize Israel's Jewishness, but that they are willing to see it as a "joint homeland" for the two nations.

"This means we recognize the Jewish nation's rights in Israel as individuals and a group. But not at the Arabs' expense. We will respect each other if they respect our rights," said Dr. Asad Ghanem, a political scientist, who wrote the chapter.

The chapter presents Israel as a state created by colonialism, which grew strong due to the increased Jewish migration to Palestine in the wake of World War II's consequences and the Holocaust. It says Israel imposed a colonial policy on its Arab citizens, including confiscation of their land and redefining the culture as Jewish.

The document demands changing the state's symbols. "After 60 years we must grow up and speak the truth. This state must contain both groups on all levels. Let the Jews have Zionist symbols in their space. I support that. But why impose those symbols on me?" asked Ghanem.

The chapters presented Tuesday will be part of a book to be published by the Monitoring Committee. It was initiated by Hatib, prepared by the local authority heads' committee and financed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

"The Or Committee also ruled that the Israeli Arabs' weakness is the lack of group rights. That was written by a Jew, and nobody felt threatened, but when the Arabs say it, it's threatening," he said.

The chapter about the Palestinian state says the Israeli Arabs support the establishment of a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel. It would belong to the Palestinian people, while Israel would be a binational state, as it has a Jewish majority and a large Arab minority. It calls for setting up a democracy constituting a coalition of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Each side would run its own affairs and each would have a right to veto the other's decisions.

The document says the Arab public does not see Israel's present government system as a democracy, and says Israel is an ethnocracy, like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Latvia and others.

For more on the bi-national state see also
my earlier Edward Said related post.

Iraqis Seek to Stem Sectarian Violence

2006-12-09T18:44:00.000+01:00

Iraqi groups are making tentative moves to stem sectarian violence by organizing a coalition called the National Salvation Front and calling for national and international meetings. Moqtada al-Sadr's Tayyera Sadriyyin party is crucial for the advancement of the goals of the alliance of Shiite, Sunni and secular groups.

Iraqis Seek to Stem Sectarian Violence
by David Enders
09 December 2006

(...)
Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the Iraqi Dialogue Front, a secular political party whose critics accuse him of links to the insurgency and former government, recently announced the creation of the National Salvation Front, a grouping of parties that spans sects and is calling for regional and international meetings to reach an agreement between Iraqis.
On December 6, as headlines in the United States were dominated by the Iraq Study Group's suggestions about how the Bush administration should proceed in Iraq, Maliki made his own headlines, by reversing his initial opposition to holding such meetings.
The new front includes the Tayyera Sadriyyin, the political party led by anti-occupation cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia, number of seats in parliament and cabinet posts rival those of Hakim's party.
Sadr's party allied with Hakim's and other Shiite parties in elections in late 2005, but has since broken with Hakim over power-sharing and Hakim's continued calls to partition Iraq. If the new front holds, it would be a serious challenge to the current government, as Sadr has already withdrawn his support for Maliki over the latter's meeting with Bush and refusal to allow the Iraqi parliament to discuss the issue of allowing U.S. troops to remain in the country, an issue Sadriyyin members of parliament have spearheaded.
In 2004, before widespread sectarian violence broke out, Sadr's militia coordinated to some extent with Sunni guerillas to battle U.S. troops before Sadr was convinced to participate in the political process and a government that is now seen as a joke.
A Sadr spokesman said that he was hopeful Sadr's supporters would move away from sectarian politics and ally with Sunnis.
"We need to have an alliance with secular and religious Sunnis," said Ghaith al-Tamimi, a member of the Sadriyyin media department in Baghdad. "The Sadriyyin should stand up because we are running out of time on this issue."
Mustafa al-Hiti, a member of Mutlaq's party who spends much of his time in Amman, said the only parties not participating were Maliki's Dawa, the country's two main Kurdish parties, and Hakim's SCIRI -- essentially, the Bush administration's only allies in Iraq.
Hiti said that discussions over the formation of the bloc had begun before Bush's meeting with Maliki, but that the group had decided to announce itself now to capitalize in part on U.S. support for the sort of regional talks Maliki had initially rejected.
(...)
The entire article

Best Wishes 2006

2005-12-26T18:33:00.000+01:00

In memory of Bouna and Zied
In memory of French November 2005

Fw: Communiqué on the Iraqi Election Frauds

2005-12-18T20:01:00.000+01:00

COMMUNIQUE ON THE IRAQI ELECTION FRAUDS
DEC. 13, 2005

Despite the assurance of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq(IECI), on preventing 86000 illegal voters from tainting the electoral process in Kerkuk as they did in January 30, 2005 elections. They changed their decision and not only allowed the 86000 illegal voters from voting but opened the voter’s lists for further additions.
This kind of reverse actions from the IECI are a good proof that they are under tremendous pressures from well known circles to serve their own agendas.
With this kind of unjust actions and allowance for fraud on behalf of the IECI and the decision of the European Parliament for refusing to send election observers to Iraq, THE IRAQI ELECTIONS WILL NOT HAVE ANY CREDIBILITY AND THE RESULTS WILL BE QUESTIONABLE.
We ask the American administration who labeled these elections as "democratic" to put and end to the tricks and frauds being displayed by the major players in the Iraqi arena.
We ask the IECI to standby its original honest decision of preventing 86000 Illegal voters from further discrediting the Iraqi elections.

Orhan Ketene
Iraqi Turkmen Front
U.S. Representative

Translation
of the communiqué (in French) which was sent to members and commissioners of the European Parliament in Brussels

COMMITTEE FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE IRAQI TURKMEN RIGHTS
BELGIUM
14th December 2005

SUBJECT: ELECTORAL FRAUDS AND IRREGULARITIES IN IRAQ

The January 30, 2005 general election in Iraq has been tainted with multiple irregularities and frauds which have permitted to the coalition of the Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) to sweep off not only the totality of the seats of the three provinces which are under their control since 1991 (Erbil, Duhok and Suleymaniya) but also to appropriate the majority of the seats in the other northern provinces (Kerkuk, Musul, Salahaddin and Diyala) where they are clearly a minority, to the detriment of the Arabs, of the Turkmen and of the Chaldo-Assyrians.
These frauds and irregularities have permitted to the coalition of the Kurdish parties to obtain 55 seats out of a total of 275 and thus become the second most important parliamentary group in the country and impose itself on a national level as an ineluctable parliamentarian group to form the government and rule the country with powers which are clearly disproportionate with regard to its real representation in the country.
The Turkmen organizations and political parties have denounced in due time these frauds and irregularities committed during this election and they have sent letters of protest on the day following the election to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) to contest the results of the election, especially for the following reasons:
1-The participation of 86.000 Kurdish voters, irregularly registered on the electoral lists in Kerkuk although they were not residents of this city. They had been brought to Kerkuk by the Kurdish parties after the invasion and occupation of the country in March 2003 in order to change the ethnic compostion of this city to impose their hegemony.
2- Preventing hundreds of thousands of Turkmen voters of Tel Afar, Musul, Kerkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, etc. to cast their votes. The Kurdish parties and their militias (peshmerga) which were de facto controling the election process in these regions used multiple pretexts to prevent the Turkmen from voting in these regions.
3- The Kurds organized electoral frauds in the regions under their control in order to inflate the number of voters in favour of the coalition of the Kurdish parties by allowing thousands of their partisans to vote several times in the same polling centers and by organizing the transport of thousands of their partisans to enable them to cast their votes in several polling centers on the day of the election.
4- The anarchy in the collection of the ballot boxes after the closing of the voting centers, the counting irregularities, the substitution of voting papers, etc...
Copies of the claims and letters of protest by the Turkmen political parties have also been sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations and to the Members and Commissioners of the European Parliament, informing them of the electoral frauds and irregularities which took place during the election, demanding their help in order to ensure that the next election in Iraq would take place in better and democratic conditions.
The IECI after verification of the electoral lists in Kerkuk had accepted the demands of the Turkmen parties and had removed the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the voting lists in Kerkuk for the 15th December 2005 election, but unfortunately, once again under the pressure of Kurdish parties this commission volt-faced (reversed its decision) at the last minute.
In effect we have just learned that not only the IECI has cancelled its decision concerning the removal of the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the electoral lists in Kerkuk, but that it has accepted the registration of thousands of other irregular voters on the electoral lists in Kerkuk !
These last minute decisions taken by the IECI in favour of the Kurdish parties and to the detriment of the Turkmen will falsify the results of the upcoming election in the province of Kerkuk and will remove all its credibility.
The Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmen Rights denounces the pressures made on the IECI by the Kurdish parties and condemns the decision of this Commission which allows tens of thousands of irregular voters to cast their votes in Kerkuk.
We ask the IECI to reverse its last decision and remove once and for all the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the electoral lists in Kerkuk and to refuse the registration of the new irregular and illegal voters in Kerkuk.
We regret the absence of European observers during this election and we ask the Members and Commissioners of the European Parliament and the heads of political parties in Europe to take action and condemn such practices which are contrary to the basic principles of democracy.

Dr. Hassan AYDINLI
Committee for the Defense of the Iraqi Turkmen Rights - Belgium.

The Message of French "Natives" to Iraqis

2005-12-18T13:17:00.000+01:00

"Don’t Emulate French Republicanism!"

Only enough French republicanism to hold the country together is actually needed in Iraq. Beyond that, the very communitarian logic of the recent Iraqi constitution might just as well inspire an updating of French-style integration.

"Indigenous Citizens"

Manifestation du 08 mai 2005
© AFP, FRANCOIS GUILLOT

While many Iraqi radicals, democrats and patriots still hold French republicanism in nearly religious veneration, France’s postcolonial "natives" (i.e., second and third generation Muslim immigrants from ex-colonial Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa) consider it simply a form of racism. Occasionally, some of these discriminated and excluded Frenchmen may even feel attracted to extremely conservative (i.e., loose consociational and non agonistic) forms of communitarian political organization.

The fact is that the latest urban riots have showed to what degree French-style integration; i.e., French assimilation policy, has been downgraded and fallen in disuse.

Naturally, left-wing defenders of this integration model will continue explaining in social-economistic terms the revolt of the suburbs of Paris and the other cities of France. They will continue explaining November 2005 in terms of the cutbacks in government subsidies that have curtailed social services in the affected areas. They will invoke the rage stemming from neo-liberal policies and the need therefore for a "Marshall Plan for the suburbs" (Bernard Cassen, Le Monde diplomatique); they will invoke either the economic globalization (Toni Negri) or the imperfections of everyday French republicanism and (Olivier Roy).

Its defenders from a more or less extremist right-wing will continue equating identity politics with hatred and fanaticism. They will invoke Islamist fundamentalism as well as anti-French and anti-West racism (Alain Finkielkraut, France’s answer to Samuel Huntington).

In this sense, the controversy about the identity of the breakers – "Are they Frenchmen or anti-Frenchmen?" – exemplified the two positionings. To some all that these youthful insurgents ask for is being Frenchmen and finding their way back into their sweet France, to others these Afro-Arab-Muslim rioters simply hate France and everything French. In reality, neither neo-liberal globalization nor any Islamist or anti-West identity drift can, not alone anyway, explain why this violence had to burst in France precisely.

So what is the alternative to French color and identity "blind" assimilation; what sort of social and political integration qualifies as truly postcolonial?
Firstly, according to a widely held opinion among Frenchmen, communitarianism is the dominant integration model in the Anglo-Saxon world. To French Le Figaro, even Sweden is communitarian. This is to say that everything is relative of course. Or as they say: the one-eyed may be king among blind people. In truth, except for specialized political scientists, the word communitarianism (kommunitärism) has never been part of the language use of Swedish, rather Jacobin, monarchy.

What else are we left with than this liberal multiculturalism that is put into practice here, there, and everywhere else but in France?

Well, in the U.S. you can be American and Muslim, American and Black, indeed. The "and" that is officially banished in France is definitely essential to citizenship and can no longer be evaded, as Esther Benbassa states it. As she expresses it too, it is in the own interest of those in power in France "to take it into account." But let’s not be mistaken about it: in the U.S. hyphenated identities are accepted for individuals only; the federal system in the U.S. is based on territory and does neither recognize ethnicity and confession nor allow for communal political representation.

To be or not to be French is not the question. Rather, the question is whether or not France can offer its insurgent children a new form of Frenchness. Acknowledging a crisis of French identity, President Chirac spoke of those more than two weeks of unrest as "bearing witness to a deep malaise." "We will respond by being firm, by being fair and by being faithful to the values of France," Chirac said. Just which values exactly and how ready he was for a radical updating of the whole idea of Frenchness is the question.

What about a multicultural and inter-communitarian "republicanism," for example? What about a (consociational) political representation secured for all communities in France, one that is matched with a (agonistic) public sphere where all communal identities are freely discussed and perpetually called into question?

How about applying the "freedom-equality-fraternity" motto to the attitude communities are to take to each other in France, with all that this would imply in terms of quotas – in parliament, government, and the economy – and in terms of affirmative action measures in favor of the disadvantaged? How about a French fatherland defined by the loyalty of the said communities toward a certain Hexagonal territory and a certain cultural arena? How about citizenship defined by inter-communal consensual minimal individual protections, matched with maximal duties toward the fatherland?

I commented once (April 2005) on the history of the confessional constitutional system in Lebanon in these terms:

[…] we must then admit that a very strong alteration or hybridization of French metropolitan law had taken place on Lebanese colonised soil. (Following in emigrants’ wake, this subversive process has now reached the very French metropolitan soil, where much energy and money is spent these days in order to stop the new specter haunting la République or what the French call with strong disapproval "le communautarisme.")

Well, I think that time is ripe now to complete this cycle of hybridization. I‘m serious about it, updating the French-style integration might need draw on the very communitarian logic of the recent Iraqi constitution – I’m not speaking of drawing on the federal provisions of the said constitution but on its potential for a tight consociationalism with some more central power. But inversely too, only enough French republicanism to hold the country together is actually needed in Iraq. For example, the absolutist laïcité requirement is the last thing needed to save the Iraqi constitution. In other words, a consociational "République" is as badly needed in France as a "republican" consociation is in Iraq.

To those not directly concerned, I recommend this bilingual website for further reading:

Idées de France

Unity/Diversity: a Colonial Puzzle?
With its universalist dogma and legal denial of cultural and ethnic identities, in favor of the more abstract (and formally equal) "citizen" status, isn’t the French Republic in fact still in tune with its old colonial-era "civilising mission"? And isn’t the overwhelming feeling of social "exclusion" within the suburban housing projects to be blamed on a colonial heritage and some sort of continuity between the political inferiority endured by these kids’ grandparents and the still paternalistic tone of today’s Republican elites? Such are the latest questions raised by the defenders of a "postcolonial" approach to contemporary France.

The bottom line is the link between the official "unity" claimed by the French Republic and the ethnic and cultural "diversity" that is both a consequence of France’s colonial past and a historical key to the French nation. This link is a complex, dialectical one, which explains why working at neutralising identity politics — as France has for a long while — may very well result in actually reinforcing them. This type of postcolonial paradox is not encountered in former colonial powers such as Great Britain or Portugal — which points to the idea of a crisis of universalism specific to France. These questions and others are on top of today’s agenda, at a time when France is trying to make sense of what happened in its toughest suburbs in early November.
[...]

A Colonial Unconscious?
In the same way that De Gaulle’s 1945 France had opted for a version of Vichy as a historical accident to support national reconciliation — favoring a form of self-censorship regarding the history of France’s collaboration with the Nazis — some commentators now wonder whether De Gaulle’s 1960s and 1970s France hasn’t made a similar choice to defuse the many tensions between French nationals, repatriates from North Africa, and descendants of immigrants (that is, most often, of colonised populations): the untold idea was to remain silent about the damage inflicted by colonialism and the so-called "republican racism" it had fueled (to use a phrase favored by today’s prosecutors of republicanism). Which would be the reason why the colonial debate is being reopened so late today, and therefore in such a potentially explosive manner, after being silenced back when ex-colonies were becoming independent nations.

Immigrants/Colonized: Any link?
The broader question is that of the possible persistency of colonial-style behavior in the French Republic’s relationship with immigrant (and immigrant-origin) minorities — insofar as most of them are the direct descendants of the "subjects" of its old colonial empire. What raised such a question is the type of assimilationist policies favored in France, along with their "universalist" justification, and above all the government’s powerlessness and agressive attitude at the same time in the face of its poorest suburbs. A vivid reminder of this came in early November when the Villepin centre-right cabinet chose to revive a colonia era "state of emergency" regulation: a 1955 law allowing city administrations to impose a curfew on their respective territories.
This idea of a direct connection — if not of a continuity — between France’s colonial past and contemporary urban policies is strongly rejected by traditional defenders of France’s republicanism: from conservative columnists warning against the risk of "a competition of victims", as Le Figaro’s Alain-Gérard Slama to newsweekly Marianne’s columnists, all the way to the most vigorous advocates of Enlightenment values, such as André Glucksmann indicting "the fires of hatred" and Alain Finkielkraut denouncing in the Israeli press "those young anti-West rioters".
[...]

The Republic vs. the Natives
This same line of argument is followed by those who wonder whether neutralising (and legally denying) particular ethno-cultural identities, in the name of a humanistic conception of the abstract "citizen", does not actually help to reinforce them, by pushing them back toward identitarian modes of self-expression that can only be displayed away from the Republic’s framework.
Such is the suggestion made by the several hundred young activists who signed the now-much debated December 2004 "call to the indigenous people within the Republic" and demand that a symposium on "postcolonial anti-colonialism" be organized by the government: they claim that in the French Republic of the new Millenium, their only belonging is to a community of "descendants of slaves and African prisoners, sons and daughters of colonised people and immigrants" rather than to the French national community or citizenry. Another sign that the current return of the colonial repressed is fashioning new attitudes and discourses.

Towards Iraqi Reconciliation

2005-11-23T23:43:00.000+01:00

In January Bush said he would pullout of Iraq if the new Iraq government (this was before the elections) asked him to pullout. On the other hand, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance list had originally called for an American troop withdrawal, but that plan was dropped even before the January 30 elections, presumably because of American pressure. Well, the Iraq government and the Iraqi people are now asking for the withdrawal, better still, the preparatory reconiciliation conference, held in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League, accepted the right for Iraqi groups to mount an armed resistance against the foreign troops:

Iran Urges Iraq to Seek Pullout Timetable
Nov 22, 6:28 PM (ET)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader urged the Iraqi president on Tuesday to seek a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying the American presence harms the country.

Read article >>

Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable
By Salah Nasrawi
Tuesday November 22, 2005 3:16 AM

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a ''legitimate right'' of resistance.
The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.
The participants in Cairo agreed on ''calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation'' and end terror attacks.

...
Debate in Washington over when to bring troops home turned bitter last week after decorated Vietnam War vet Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and estimated a pullout could be complete within six months. Republicans rejected Murtha's position.

...
The conference also decided on broad conditions for selecting delegates to a wider reconciliation gathering in the last week of February or the first week of March in Iraq. It essentially opens the way for all those who are willing to renounce violence against fellow Iraqis.

Read article >>

Poll: Iraqis not in favor of occupation

BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- A poll of Iraqis found most think the occupation forces are hurting the country and 45 percent approve of attacks on foreign troops.
The London Telegraph obtained a copy of the results of the study which showed that in some areas 65 percent support attacks, and less than one percent think the occupation is improving security.
The poll, conducted by Iraqi university researchers who were not told the data would be used by Britain's Defense Ministry, showed stark numbers against the occupation forces, which contradicts the positive message coming from London and Washington.
Eighty-two percent of respondents said they "strongly oppose" troops being in their country, 67 percent feel less secure and 72 percent have no confidence that the occupation will succeed.

Iraq's Patriotic Communities, the Turkmen

2005-11-07T22:53:00.000+01:00

Here are some more reasons to reject the so-called constitution and oppose the would-be political process: According to the Iraqi Turkmen for example, the constitution is deficient in terms of both democracy and justice. I hereby seize this opportunity to apologize for my till now poor attentiveness as to developments involving other Iraqi communities than those which draw most public attention. Of course, I have been too schematic about all this. Though, my past insistence on Kurdish identity in Iraq was a way of contesting exclusive, if not totalitarian, Arab identity; I did not mean at all to exclude the other Iraqi communal identities – Assyrian, Christian, Yezidi, etc. I hope I made it clear that national-patriotic reconciliation and democratic dialogue or negotiation (the real "political process") should embrace every ethnic and every confessional community:

Undemocratic aspects of the new Iraqi constitution draft
Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation
August 16, 2005

[...]
The policy of the American occupation is clearly undemocratic. The U.S. Grant the Kurds all types of facilities and the leading positions in the north of Iraq, particularly in the oil-rich Turkmen province of Kerkuk which was handed to the Kurds. The Administrative State Law, which was written by the Americans in 2004 ‘to democratize Iraq’, included many undemocratic items, such as:
As the constitution of 1958, it made discrimination between the different Iraqi communities by saying that Iraq is constituted from the Arabs and Kurds, in contradiction with all the international laws and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Thereby, it grants to the Kurdish minority which represents 17% of the Iraqi population, rights equal to those of the Arab majority which represents 65% of the Iraqi population while ignoring the rights of the Turkmen who represent 13% of the Iraqi population and also ignoring the rights of the Chaldo-Assyrian community, which represents about 5% of the Iraqi population and other minorities. Accordingly, the Kurdish language must be studied in all Iraq while the Turkmen and Chaldo-Assyrian languages could not be used officially in government schools, even in the regions were these nationalities constitute the majority.
This Law gives the 3 Kurdish provinces the right to reject any decision made by the Iraqi parliament.

The major undemocratic aspects of the published version of the new Iraqi Constitution are the item 3 and 4 of section I. In this section - item 3, the Iraqi people are classified into 2 major ethnics groups, Arabs and Kurds, and to other basic ethnic groups, i.e. the Turkmen, Cheldo-Assyrians and others.

In item 4, the Arabic language continues to be the official language of Iraq and the Kurdish beside the Arabic language in the Kurdish region, while other languages should be decided in the referendum.
[…]

With all due respect to the Arab League, I think the General Secretary of the Turkmen Commission is quite right when he simultaneously "emphasizes the territorial integrity" and the cultural diversity of Iraq, considering it "appropriate to mention that Iraq is a multinational and multi-religious country, the majority of Arabs are the part of the Arab world":

Declaration of the Turkmen Committee for the Unity of Iraq (pdf)
The General Secretary of the Turkmen Commission
August 16, 2005

[...]
Turkmens insist to take an active role in rebuilding Iraq and constitution preparation process. The pressure and massacre to which Turkmens have been subjected are not less than those of other groups have been subjected to. Our Committee, therefore, would like to draw your attention to following points:

1. We would like to underline that new Constitution should treat all groups fairly and the interests of the nation must be kept over all things. Realizing our national development in safety and through the rules adopted by the civilized countries should be our main principle.

2. We mention that we are for an Iraq ruled by republic and having a democratic, pluralistic and parliamentary system. The government should be rotating in Iraq. Free and fair election is needed for that The status of current 18 provinces of Iraq should be maintained and each province should be governed whether being self-governing territory or federal administration in accordance with the all Iraqis consensus. So, federal system means that provinces have a federated structure. Here we’d like to emphasize the necessity to maintain Iraqi territorial and national integrity.

3. Rights and should be the official religion and one of the legislative sources of the Iraqi nation.

4. The religion of Islam should be the official religion and one of the legislative sources of the Iraqi nation.

5. As mentioned in the Transitional Administrative Law’s Article 44, the Constitutional Court should be established in Iraq and the right of suing issues that are against the constitution should be given to the people and the political entities. Also, people and political entities should have the right to sue the government for acting against the constitution to the international court.

6. National and constitutional rights should be given to all Iraqis without discrimination. This principle should explicitly be mentioned in the constitution and none of the ethnic groups should be treated in secondary consideration and none of the ethnic groups role or position should be exaggerated.

7. We believe that is appropriate to mention that Iraq is a multinational and multi-religious country, the majority of Arabs are the part of the Arab world and the Muslims who are in majority in Iraq are the parts of Islam.

8. The official language of Iraq should be Arabic; however, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish should be official language where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are majority. In Turkmen regions, the rights of education in Turkish should be guaranteed. Same rights should be given to Kheldo-Assyrians and others.

9. Families are the basis of a society. Therefore, nation-state should protect families, provide health and social services, and the right of education for them. It also should provide the rights of education and employment for women.

10. It has to be adopted that the future of Kirkuk and the adherence of it to any part are not regional matters and has to be decided by all the Iraqis.

11. Principles of separation of powers, independence of justice and subordination of armed forces to civil authorities should be adopted. All militia forces should be abolished. There should be army an army which is created to defend the country; and the army should not intervene in policy.

The Turkmen repeatedly proved their loyalty to Iraq. For example, the recent (September) attack on Tal Afar "was mainly about punishing the Sunni Turkmen for allying with the Sunni Arab guerrillas." I am citing here Juan Cole: "In the continued ‘scorched earth’ policy of the US military in the Sunni areas, a joint US/ Iraqi (mostly Kurdish) force appears to have levelled entire neighborhoods in Tal Afar, a northern Turkmen city [70 percent Sunni Turkmen and 30 percent Shi’i Turkmen], making most of its 200,000 inhabitants refugees living in squalid tent camps or with friends and relatives elsewhere." And only some time before (August) in Kirkuk, Turkmens and Arabs, both groups mostly Shi’is and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr this time, demonstrated against federalism, denouncing it as likely to lead to the partition and weakening of Iraq; denouncing it also as an imperialist and Zionist plot.

From the very first day of the Occupation, the Turkmen and the Arabs of Kirkuk resisted the Kurdish Peshmergas’ hold on the city and the plans to incorporate the province in an autonomous Kurdistan. The situation in the province has been potentially explosive since then, because of the oil fields and their significance for the Kurdish separatist project. Supporting the Shi’a Turkmen in Kirkuk, Muqtada al-Sadr (August 2003) said he "condemned any attempt to isolate the north from the rest of the country" and complained about the ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Kurds streaming back into Kirkuk and reclaiming their homes from Arab squatters. Also, supporting the demonstration (December 2003-January 2004) of 300,000 Turkmen residents who went on strike over Kurdish plans for Kirkuk, Muqtada al-Sadr fielded 2,000 men of his militia, the Army of the Mahdi, to the city - the population of the contested Kirkuk includes Turkmens, Arabs, and Kurds; the traditionally dominant Turkmen are now overwhelmed by the Kurds who are probably close to half.

The Turkmen and the Shi'i Arabs in the province of Kirkuk desperately do not want to be part of Kurdistan. The Turkmen have demanded a semi-autonomous Iraqi Turkmenistan in the event of (unovoidable) federal partition of Iraq:

Iraqi Turkmens Call for Equal Representation in Iraq
11th session of Working Group on Minorities – United Nations - Geneva
2005-06-01

[...]
Unfortunately, despite the regime change in Iraq in 2003 after the war and the occupation by the Anglo-American forces, the Turkmen tragedy continues.
Today, the Turkmen continue to be marginalized as the US helps its Kurdish allies and promotes their hegemonic ambitions to control the north of Iraq

- By repeatedly bombing Turkmen cities in Mosul.
- By allowing the Kurdish extremists and Kurdish militants (Pashmargas) to suppress the Turkmen identity of the Turkmen in Erbil.
- By allowing the Kurdification of major Turkmen cites like Kerkuk, Daquq, Tuz Khurmatu etc.... 350.000 Kurds were brought to Kerkuk city after the occupation of Iraq in 2003. Almost all the high positions and government posts in the local governments of the Turkmen region were given to the Kurds.
- By neglecting the Turkmen political parties and by ignoring their leaders and activists in appointing only one Turkmen lady from the civil society, with no political background to the Governing Council to represent the 13% of the Iraqi Turkmen, while 5 Kurds were appointed to represent the 17% of the Iraqi Kurds.
- By appointing only one Turkmen academic without any political history in the Interim Government to represent the Turkmen community.
- By allowing and accepting all sorts of manipulations and malpractices to happen in favor of the Kurds in the Turkmen region during the last elections of 30th January 2005: only 2 voting stations were opened in TAL- AFAR a Turkmen city of 300.000 inhabitants, the majority of whom could not vote.
- By allowing the Kurdish political parties to interfere in the Turkmen affairs in order to divide the Turkmen people and limit their political influence in Iraq. This interference was clearly demonstrated in Erbil on the 24th of April 2005 where the following Iraqi Turkmen Front offices and buildings were occupied by the Barazani militants:
- Head office of the ITF in Erbil city
- Turkmeneli Television station
- Turkmeneli radio station
- Turkmeneli Printing House
- The Publication of Turkmeneli Newspaper has been stopped since then.

Demands
In view of the above stated facts and problems faced by us as a Turkmen in Iraq, I address this assembly on behalf of the Turkmen, requesting your support and asking the UN to intervene in our favor to defend our just cause with the Iraqi authorities. So that finally the 3 million Turkmen obtain full rights equal to those obtained by the Arabs and Kurds and that these rights be clearly stated in the new Iraqi Constitution.

• If a federal system is accepted by the entire Iraqi nation, then the Turkmen should be given the right to govern their own federal region where they constitute the majority.
• Since all the Iraqi census was designed to serve state policy and the last election was mainly to serve the occupation authorities and the Kurds, we request that the upcoming census and/or upcoming election be monitored by the UN and the international community. The Kurdish administration be prevented from interfering in the election and census processes in the Turkmen region and security should no
longer be exclusively in the hands of the Kurds but should be provided by neutral police force from Central and Southern Iraq.
• We demand that the Turkish language be accepted as an official language along with Arabic and Kurdish in Iraq.
• We demand that the Turkmen who suffered discrimination, material, physical and psychological losses be fairly compensated.
• We demand a fair representation of the Turkmen in the Commission charged with the writing of the new constitution in order to safeguard our minority’s rights.
• We demand that the Kurdish militias be disbanded and disarmed and the Kurdification of Turkmen regions be stopped.

I thank you for your interest and attention.

Attempts to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk city by the American supported Kurds (pdf)
Iraqi Tukmen Human Rights Research Foundation
September 17, 2004

After the war and occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces in April 2003, the Kurdish political parties KDP and PUK who had supported it with their armed militias - for their own old political agenda to take control of Kirkuk province and its oil wealth - were rewarded for their collaboration with the Americans who allowed their militias to enter Kirkuk and perpetrate in this mainly Turkmen city the exactions, human rights abuses and looting that they allowed to happen in all other parts of what they called "liberated Iraq," as we have all seen on the TV screens last year.
[...]

__________________________________________________________

IRAQI TURKMEN
__________________________________________________________

Geographical Features:
The majority of the Muslim Turkmens are concentrated in the northern Iraqi provinces of Mosul, Erbil, Kerkuk, Salahaddin and Diyala. There are also significant numbers of Turkmens in the central provinces of Baghdad, Wasit, Kerbala and Najaf.

Population:
The Turkmens are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Kurds and Arabs. The number of the Turkmens is estimated at 3 million or %13 of the Iraqi population. They form a cultural buffer zone between Arabs in the south and Kurds in the north.
The Turkmen region has large natural resources such as Oil, gas and Sulphur. In addition, there is an abundant production of wheat and cotton.

Read more >>>
__________________________________________________________

Against the Draft Constitution

2005-10-13T02:42:00.000+02:00

Only a tight consociation can guarantee the unity and survival of Iraq.

1. There is no question about the draft constitution meeting every requirement of loose federalism and three-state solution for Iraq: Provisions on decentralism and con-federalism ensure not only the supremacy of regional law over federal law but stripes the Iraqi Supreme Court (i.e., the conventional federal "rule of judges") of juridiction over regional laws and Kurdistan’s laws in particular; provisions on distribution of natural resources ensure regional control of oil resources; and provisions on army ensure the acceptance of militias as the official military force of the region - we may skip here the controversies over whether the draft constitution opens the door for partition or it only ratifies a break-up that has already happened; also, whether it destabilizes the geopolitical balance in the region, or is instead the "peace treaty" of the de facto independent states of former Iraq.

2. Federation, be it loose as in the present case or tight as some would like it, doesn’t solve the complex distribution of territory, economic resources, and population in Iraq. (See population map.) The federation’s shortcomings are acknowledged by the very champion of the draft constitution Peter Galbraith, since he in fact suggests a consociational solution int the case of the Kirkuk province. And especially as he implies such a solution for Baghdad and the whole Sunni Arab region – not to mention the more than one million Sunni Arabs in the south and center who would fall under Shi’i domination.

The current demands coming from the Sunni Arabs to amend the draft constitution before the Oct. 15 referendum (here), namely the demands to expand the powers of the federal government and decrease powers of the regional governments, are therefore useless. They are as useless as the propositions, usually made by intellectuals such as K. Makiya and the Dawishas, to conceive of the federated units in purely geographical terms or to dramatically increase their number – compare the proposed 18 states for 26 million Iraqis with the actual 16 länder for 82 million Germans and 50 states for 297 million Americans.

Many agree that the only way for Iraq to avoid catastrophe is a political accord among Shi’is, Kurds and Sunni Arabs; that is, a national compromise based on the preservation of Iraq as a unified state in which resources and political power are fairly shared and citizen rights protected. However, what the Iraqi state needs is not some "genuine" or tighter type of federalism; Iraq could be politically consociational and yet territorially a unitary state. I am not the only one to think so; it is indeed hard to see how a centralized Iraq run by Shi’is could serve the interests of its Sunni population. In particular, I think only the general consociational features of the draft constitution, rather than its specifically federalist ones, may well be a better guardian of the rights of the Sunni Arab minority than a unitary state in which majority rule would probably leave them routinely short of the voting strength necessary to have an effective say in their own governance.

3. Also, while tight consociation is obviously the best solution for Iraq, it should be noted that the loose federalism of the draft document actually builds on a few loose-consociational presuppositions. For example, the provisions on autonomous taxes and legal systems for Kurdistan and provinces grouped into regions for Shi’is and Sunnis are drawing on models of communal, ethnic and confessional, self-government. The draft thus says the Kurdish north may opt for modern secular law, the Shi’i south for Islamic Shari’a law, and any individual may choose as he or she sees fit. As P. Galbraith (below) puts it, "each Iraqi, for example, can decide whether he or she wants disputes over personal issues such as divorce or inheritance settled according to his or her sect's religious law or according to the secular civil code." In other words, what has already been named "the most decentralist constitution on earth" is probably the most multiculturalist constitution on earth too.

Last Chance for Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith
October 6, 2005

The Kurds viewed the Iraqi constitution largely as if it were intended for a [Shi’i] foreign state. As a result, they were not prepared to block a deal because of concerns to protect secularism and gender equality for others as long as any objectionable provisions about either one did not apply to Kurdistan. … The Shiites were mostly willing to concede that the Kurds (and any other region) could legally opt out of many provisions of the constitution because they knew this to be the price of having the constitution endorse Islamic law.
[…]
Still, for all the attention that has been given to the constitutional provisions concerning women and Islam, the federal constitution is largely irrelevant to the actual treatment of women and the application of Islamic law. Regional constitutions and law will, according to the federal constitution, have primacy concerning these matters. This arrangement enables Kurdistan to preserve its secular status and to keep human rights protections in its constitution that are superior to those in the federal constitution. But this also means that the Shiite region (or regions) will apply a much stricter version of Islamic law, particularly in the federal constitution.

Similarly, the Western imported or US dictated federal mechanisms, to some degree, build on local consociational practice and Ottoman millet tradition (Iraq's pre-1958 monarchical constitution actually reserved a certain number of seats in parliament for Christians and Jews):

Drafting Iraq’s New Constitution
Principles and materials
Minority Rights Group International
May 2005

The demand for a central role for shari’a in the new Iraqi constitution has to date come primarily from certain Shi’a leaders. The population distribution by sect in Iraq is however very different from that of Iran. Although Sunni Arabs make up only about 20 per cent of the population, the great majority of Kurds are also Sunni Muslims. The Shi’a-Sunni split among Muslims as a whole is therefore approximately 3-2. This would work against any specific school of shari’a assuming constitutional dominance (unless, perhaps, a system of radical regional autonomy was agreed).

Many other communities in Iraq will also be concerned to preserve their religious belief and practices. Here it is instructive to look again at the Ottoman millet system that was previously applied in Iraq. The system, based on the recognition of personal laws of each community and cultural and religious councils with autonomous powers over the community in these matters, was adopted by the League of Nations when Iraq was granted its independence in 1932 on the termination of the mandatory regime. At that time the Iraqi government agreed, among other minority provisions, that non-Muslim minorities would be allowed, ‘in so far as concerns their family law and personal status, measures permitting the settlement of these questions in accordance with the customs and usages of the communities to which those minorities belong’ (art. 6 of the Declaration made by Iraq on 30 May 1932). In addition they would have the right to establish and fund religious, educational and charitable organizations, and to provide education in their own languages. These provisions had in fact been already included in the 1925 constitution.

4. The Iraqi draft constitution creates no conditions whatsoever of tight consociationalism. To create such conditions, it need from the outset take an uncompromising stand (excluding all forms of federalism) on the country’s territorial unity and the indivisibility of its sovereignty, security, and natural resources. Once it has, it need be steadfast in initiating a common Iraqi standard of political rights and duties - not to be confused with abstract universal human rights.

Indeed, the draft constitution fails to adequately protect internal communal critics and members dissenting from confessional conformity. In particular, the provisions on the rights of women need not be confusing or unworkable; that is, they need not be so if matched with stipulations instituting consociational courts. Consociational law (not "civil code") should be standing above all sorts of communal laws - ethnic or confessional, religious or secular - equally. It should intervene whenever parties to conflict assert their rights with reference to different laws respectively. On the other hand, pleadings must aim at some standard of integrity, as each conflict partner cannot make use of more than one communal law at the same time. Procedures such as in international private and public laws could be then resorted to – when necessary, pre-Islamic cultural practices could be invoked too.

In the same way, the draft constitution fails to adequately promote active Iraqi citizenship; it fails in upbringing patriotic citizens critical to communal (e.g., Shi'i) insularism and nationalist (e.g., Kurdish) separatism as well as to foreign meddling and international moral paternalism. (Compare Amnesty International’s Call for a human rights based constitution with the organization’s silence on Iraqis’ self-determination right, Open Letter to Amnesty International on the Iraqi Constitution.) More particularly, provisions on "de-Ba’thification" and "war on terrorism" are nowhere matched with any provisions on legitimate resistance or foreign troops withdrawal. (See Docena and Riverbend below.)

How the US got its neoliberal way in Iraq
By Herbert Docena
Sep 1, 2005

…The media have tended to focus on the cultural and sectarian provisions of the constitution, ignored the significant insertion of economic provisions, and altogether missed the link between the two. What most likely happened was this: the US tolerated the adoption of religious provisions in the constitution and agreed to the establishment of a federal system in Iraq, as demanded by the Shi'ite and Kurdish parties, in exchange for the introduction of neo-liberal economic provisions in the constitution.
[…]
One other thing worth mentioning is that Iraq’s will probably be the only constitution in the world that enshrines "fighting terrorism" as one of the state’s objectives. Given how "terrorism" in Iraqi discourse has been used by pro-occupation Iraqis and US officials to refer to the resistance movement, the clause could be invoked to legally justify continuing military offensives against political forces that refuse to come to terms with the occupation and the political process it has bred. As has happened in other countries, the "war against terror" could also conceivably be used to justify continuing US military presence in Iraq.

Riverbend, Baghdad Burning
September 17, 2005

The most interesting article in Chapter 1, however, was in the first draft of the constitution published on August 22 by some newspapers but it isn’t in the final draft (at least it’s not in the New York Times English version). It is numbered Article (16), in the version of the draft constitution it appeared in:

Article (16):
1. It is forbidden for Iraq to be used as a base or corridor for foreign troops.
2. It is forbidden to have foreign military bases in Iraq.
3. The National Assembly can, when necessary, and with a majority of two thirds of its members, allow what is mentioned in 1 and 2 of this article.

This one is amusing because in the first two parts of the article, foreign troops are forbidden and then in the third, they’re kind of allowed… well sometimes- when the puppets deem it necessary (to keep them in power). What is worrisome about this article, on seeing the final version of the draft constitution, is its mysterious disappearance- in spite of the fact that it leaves a lot of leeway for American bases in Iraq. Now, in the final version of the constitution, there is nothing about not having foreign troops in the country or foreign bases, at the very least. The "now you see it"/ "now you don’t" magical effect of this article, especially, reinforces the feeling that this constitution is an "occupation constitution."

Consociational Patriotism

2005-04-18T18:48:00.000+02:00

I must say that, apart from political scientists, no involved party, whether in Lebanon or Iraq, is expected to self-evidently acknowledge virtues of consociation. Naturally, every party would rather see its own values adopted by every other party. I mean, no one person is entirely happy with compromise solutions; compromise systems are only reluctantly tolerated.

As to Arab popular reserve against consociational democracy, and apart from a certain grievance against the part played by the French in the 1932 Lebanese census, it is simply unfounded. For example, according to wide spread belief among Arabs, Lebanon’s confessional system was a French colonial imposition on the Lebanese people; the truth is, the system was rather imposed upon the French by the people of Lebanon.

One need only consider the diametrically opposed constitutional archetypes; the French -- state-unitarian, majoritarian, secular, liberal -- and the Lebanese -- consociational, power-sharing, confessional, communitarian. Should we, on the other hand, attach great importance to the common republican aspect, we must then admit that a very strong alteration or hybridization of French metropolitan law had taken place on Lebanese colonised soil. (Following in emigrants’ wake, this subversive process has now reached the very French metropolitan soil, where much energy and money is spent these days in order to stop the new specter haunting la République or what the French call with strong disapproval "le communautarisme.")

Indeed, the proportionality system from 1926 ("the quota system") was not so much colonial as it was pre-colonial, Ottoman (Millet system) and more generally Islamic. The 23 May 1926 French Constitution for Lebanon, while inspired by constitutional laws of 1875 French Third Republic, made actually official the local traditional system of power-sharing between communities, with Article 95 in particular providing that communities were to be fairly and proportionately represented in public office, ministry and parliament. Mandatory power France was then pressured by then prevailing international law, in general, and precise recommendations by the League of Nations from 24 July 1922, in particular -- minority protection was of course much stronger prior to our UN. The nearly parity system of the 1943 National Pact, on the other hand, was conceived in purely anti-colonial consociational-patriotic spirit. As for the more or less integral parity system of the post-civil war Ta’if Accord (1989), this, in addition to strengthening Lebanon's confessional political system, was a definitely post-colonial legacy, as no colonial powers whatsoever were directly involved in it.

"Modern" Arabs in particular are reluctant or reticent, not only because of their after all understandable sectarian motivation and natural pan-Arabist leaning, but because they literally feel ashamed of the confessional system in Lebanon. Whether their fetishizing attitude toward secularism stems from their long standing in awe of the former French colonial power is an open question. The fact remains that general inferiority complex towards Westerners inhibits the appreciation of a local original achievement. Hence, the constitutionally inscribed character of confessionalism as an always temporary arrangement. And hence the modernizing part devolved upon (sic) the Syrians in Lebanon, and hence the motive (or alibi) provided by the Ta’if Accord for them to stay until de-confessionalization is completed.

More on this in the 25 April issue of SWANS:

What’s Consociational Patriotism?
By Mohammed Ben Jelloun
April 25, 2005

Consociational patriotism is national power-sharing and national self-determination, simultaneously. In the case of Iraq, it is partly premised on a timetable for US evacuation with international guarantees for the withdrawal of all forms of foreign presence and partly premised on a politics of national unity and power-sharing for major, ethnic and confessional, communities in the country. It is premised on patriotic reconciliation between Kurds and Arabs in the first place. The reconciliation is comparable to the historical compromise in 1943 Lebanon, which united Christians and Muslims against their own drifting, Francophile and pan-Arab respectively. Indeed, compared to well known historical consociational models (Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Northern Ireland, etc.), Lebanon’s is a nearly unique experiment in patriotic consociationalism. Lebanon’s is a typically colonial, anti-colonial and postcolonial consociationalism and therefore particularly telling in the case of Iraq.
/.../
Lastly, while parliamentary, executive and economic quotas should stay open to negotiations and package deals between the main Iraqi communities, a quota of a no more or less than 50% for the Iraqi Shi’a may in fact promote cooperation with other political blocs and prevent majority tyranny. To be sure, Sunni Iraqis would be over-represented, but fewer so compared to Lebanon’s Christians since the 50:50 agreement of 1989. (The Sunni 50% could be in turn equally parted along ethnic or belief lines; between Arabs and Kurds or Islamists and secularists.) This sort of quotas could be used immediately to determine the choice of troops, international or regional, to replace the occupation forces in a transitional period.

Ali versus Chomsky

2005-04-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

The debate between supporters of conflicting (either-or) perspectives on Iraq; Sunni Arab versus Shi'i sympathizers, is being increasingly brought into the open—needless to say that our protagonists cannot conceive of any consociational-patriotic alternative. For example, in a Stockholm conference yesterday evening (April 4, 2005), New Left Review’s Tariq Ali expressed views about the Iraqi Shi’a and the Iranians as "US collaborators;" in particular, he didn’t enjoy the idea of al-Sistani being a Nobel Prize nominee. Tariq Ali didn’t exactly name Chomsky, whose posture is the opposite in those matters, but the latter’s idea of betting on a Shi’a Crescent-like geopolitical alternative to US domination in the region has been questioned, if only indirectly.

On Globalization, Iraq, and Middle East Studies
Noam Chomsky
interviewed by Danilo Mandic
March 29, 2005

[…]
NC: Actually I agree that the elections were a success … of opposition to the United States. What is being suppressed - except for Middle East specialists, who know about it perfectly well and are writing about it, or people who in fact have read the newspapers in the last couple of years - what's being suppressed is the fact that the United States had to be brought kicking and screaming into accepting elections. The U.S. was strongly opposed to them. I wrote about the early stages of this in a book that came out a year ago, which only discussed the early stages of U.S. opposition. But it increased. The U.S. wanted to write a constitution, it wanted to impose some kind of caucus system that the U.S. could control, and it tried to impose extremely harsh neo-liberal rules, like you mentioned, which even Iraqi businessmen were strongly opposed to. But there has been a very powerful nonviolent resistance in Iraq - far more significant than suicide bombers and so on. And it simply compelled the United States step by step to back down. That's the popular movement of nonviolent resistance that was symbolized by Ayatollah Sistani, but it's far broader than that. The population simply would not accept the rules that the occupation authorities were imposing, and finally Washington was compelled, very reluctantly, to accept elections. It tried in every way to undermine them. […] Then right now there's a struggle going on, as to whether the United States will be able to subvert the elections that it reluctantly accepted. I think you'll have a hard time finding a serious Middle Eastern scholar or anyone who pays attention who won't agree with this. In fact it's quite obvious just from reading the serious press reports on this. Of course once the United States was forced into accepting elections, the government and the media immediately pronounced that it was a great achievement of the United States. But it was quite the opposite. But it's a good thing that it happened, in opposition to the U.S. In fact it's a major triumph of nonviolent resistance, and it should be understood as such. And maybe it's a basis - now comes the question of whether Iraqis can succeed, in reaching, moving towards a stage where they will actually be able to run their own country, which the U.S. is certainly going to oppose. There is no doubt of this. The last thing the United States wants is a democratic, sovereign Iraq. To see why, it's enough to think for five minutes about what its policies are likely to be. Let's suppose there were a democratic Iraq with some degree of sovereignty. The first thing it'll do is try to improve relations with Iran. It's not that they love Iran particularly, but they'd rather have friendly relations with the neighboring Shiite state than hostile relations. So, they'll move towards improving relations with Iran, especially because it has a Shiite majority. If they're democratic enough, so the Shiite majority has a significant part. The next thing that will happen - and it's already beginning to happen - is that the victory of the Iraqis against the United States has begun to stir up similar sentiments in the Shiite areas (mostly Shiite areas) of Saudi Arabia, which is a neighbor.

DM: …and a US ally.

NC: Yeah, but that's inside Saudi Arabia, and that happens to be where most of the oil is. They have been excluded by the US and Saudi leadership, but they're not going to be likely to accept that if there is a sovereign, democratic Iraq next door. It's really a Shiite-dominated Iraq. And it's already beginning to happen. Well, you know, that'll lead towards a situation in which most of the world's oil would be under the control of a relatively autonomous Shiite alliance. The US won't tolerate that for a moment. The next thing that would happen in a sovereign Iraq is that they would try to resume their very natural position as a leading state in the Arab world. They're the most educated country, the most advanced and so on. In many ways, it should be the leader in the Arab world. Actually, those are factors that go back to Biblical times. And they'll try to resume that position, which means they'll try to rearm. They will confront the regional enemy, namely Israel, which has virtually turned into a US military outpost. They may even develop weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent against Israel's overwhelming advantage, both militarily and in weapons of mass destruction. Those are very natural developments to be expected. Can you see the US accepting any of this? I mean, those are the likely consequences - not certain, but likely consequences - of a relatively sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq. It's a nightmare for the United States. It's no wonder it tried to prevent elections in any possible way, and is now trying to undermine the results. […]

Related readings:

Iraq Elections And The Liberal Elites
A Response To Noam Chomsky
By Ghali Hassan
10 March, 2005

In a recent opinion piece, Naom Chomsky writes, "In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol" (Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005). Mr. Chomsky is either completely out of touch with reality in Iraq, or simply ignorant of the legitimate rights of the Iraqi people to self-determination.
[…]
Secondly, to describe the Iraqi people resisting this violent and illegal Occupation of their nation as simply "bomb-throwers" is to ignore the gross atrocities committed against the Iraqi people by US forces. This is like saying that, the Iraqi Resistance is responsible for all the violence and destruction in Iraq, and ignoring the violence of the Occupation and the many criminal elements working with the Occupation against the principle aim of the Iraqi people. The violence is brought by the Occupation, not by the people fighting to end it. Everywhere, violent resistance arises from a violent foreign military occupation. No word about the trigger-happy US soldiers and mercenaries, who not only enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for their crimes against the Iraqi people, but also the support of the mainstream media, and the protection of the "new Iraqi army". Those who obliged to kill to defend their country and people are called "terrorists"; those who kill en masss, using napalm, chemical and nuclear weapons, to enforce their tyranny of domination are the noble(wo)men of Western "civilisation".
[…]
Chomsky is the darling of the left and right. He is an icon for many people, and sometime provides useful information on US foreign policy. Mr. Chomsky has every right to his views, but he does not have the right to distort what the Iraqi people struggling for. The Iraqi people have legitimate right to resist the Occupation. The US and its allies will not leave Iraq; they have to be forced to leave. Armed resistance to the occupation of Iraq will continue until the foreign occupiers withdraw their armies.

The Myth of the Clash of Fundamentalisms
Takis Fotopoulos
16 October, 2004

A myth that has been heavily promoted recently is that of the clash of fundamentalisms which supposedly shakes the present world. Schematically, it is argued that what we face today is a conflict between the "extremists" of the West and those of the East, namely, of the political fundamentalism of the Washington neoconservatives versus the religious fundamentalism of extreme Islamists. However, as I will attempt to show briefly, such views are not only completely false and misleading, constituting part of the "progressive" liberal ideology supported by both the centre-left (in the framework of today’s social-liberal consensus), and the reformist Left (see, e.g. Tariq Ali’s The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Verso 2003), but also bear no relation to an antisystemic problematic on this crucial issue. The common denominator of such views is that today’s social resistance movements should turn against these two fundamentalisms rather than against the system of the capitalist market economy itself and its political complement, representative "democracy". It is not, therefore, surprising that analysts of the reformist Left like Tariq Ali and Chomsky end up with the baseless conclusion that the Left must support the Democratic candidate in the elections, "forgetting" that when the "progressive" Clinton succeeded Bush senior he went on, as representative of the transnational elite, to bombard Yugoslavia, while preparing the ground for the present invasion and occupation of Iraq through a crushing embargo and remorseless bombardments! [...]

On "Spreading Democracy"

2005-03-18T00:31:00.000+01:00

Neoconservative forces within the United States are continuing to press for "regime change" in the Middle East. But what is it that they really want? Patrick Seale explains the American plan for confronting the perceived Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis and clearing the way for an American-Israeli hegemony in the region.

Attacking the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah Axis
by Patrick Seale
18 March 2005

/.../
It has become clear that American policy is to deny Iran access to nuclear technology -- if necessary by force -- for fear that it might acquire nuclear weapons. Towards Syria, U.S. policy is to ensure its full withdrawal from Lebanon as a first step -- an aim which has now more or less been achieved -- before proceeding with "regime change" somewhat later.

Regarding Hezbollah, while the United States has come round to recognising it as a powerful force on the Lebanese scene, it seems determined to disarm it in the longer term to prevent it projecting power outside its frontiers, notably against Israel.

Syria is seen in Washington as the weakest link in the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis. In the language used by militant neo-cons it is "low-hanging fruit," ripe for picking. The argument is that a knock-out blow to Syria would bring about the collapse of the entire axis!
Syria is also accused of providing a "rear base" for the insurgency in Iraq. Overthrowing the Syrian regime is therefore promoted by the neo-cons as the key to victory in Iraq. It is clearly being set up as the next target for "regime change".

The immediate tactic would seem to be to destabilise the Damascus government by exploiting the legitimate impatience of many Lebanese with Syrian control.

Although Bush has declared that the "free world would not tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran, the United States does not seem quite ready to launch a military campaign against Iran. The view in Washington would appear to be that Iran can best be worn down by attrition.
/.../

Patriotic Basis For New Constitution?

2005-03-08T15:06:00.000+01:00

Compared to the former Iraqi Patriotic Forces Coalition (see the anti-war Statement made in London 16/4/2003), which was set up by the Shi’i Dawa Party, the Sunni Islamic Party, the Communists, and diverse nationalists, the new-born Iraqi Anti-Occupation Patriotic Forces is an alliance gravitating around the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, the Shi’i Moqtada al-Sadr's Current plus diverse nationalists. It is, so far, the alliance of Shi’i radicals and Sunni centrists–the moderate Iraqi Islamic Party was absent and the al-Zarqawi-like extremists were excluded. These Anti-Occupation Patriotic Forces, AOPF, issued a statement after a meeting held at the Baghdad headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars in which the grouping listed the foundations for drafting a permanent constitution for Iraq.

The platform states from the outset its patriotic stance of "re-establishing Iraq's independence, unity and full sovereignty." Paragraph 1, consequently, urges for a timetable and international guarantees for the withdrawal of all forms of foreign presence from Iraq. (Farther on, Paragraph 3 calls for a clear distinction to be drawn between the legitimate resistance against occupation forces and terrorism, meaning that resort to violence against innocent civilians, whether Iraqis or foreigners, and to sectarian attacks.)

However, troublesomeness starts as soon as in Paragraph 2. This causes the statement to evade any encounter and go round the gulf separating basically divergent positions. It expresses instead either a vague quota condemnation or an indefinite insistence on citizenship.

Thus, it is not being specified whether it condemns the quotas imposed by the invaders or even those possibly chosen by Iraqi citizens; whether only grand coalitions of US-puppets are being targeted or even those that could be set up by Iraqi patriots. Also, while it unrestrainedly underlines "sectarian [confessional?], racial and ethnic quotas" it doesn’t make any mention of territorial representation and federal government. It seems thus to close doors only to general consociational (e.g., confessional), not federal-geographical, suggestions. This is being so while the very opposite; confessional priority over ethnicity and geography, should be instead the obvious unifying patriotic option.

And neither is it being specified whether citizenship, on the other hand, is going to be secular or theocratic. Also, it is not being specified whether it will be a citizenship by Sunni or Shi’i standards. And, finally, it is not being specified whether it will be shaped by (a) conventional rational liberal deliberation or by (b) communal bargains and minimal consensus or mainly by (c) patriotic participation and cultural contest.

What Paragraph 2 undoubtedly shows is a parallel yet rivaling and conflicting unitary (if not totalizing) ambitions–Shi’i theocratic versus Sunni more or less secular–and propensities to selfish sectarianism. Where these do seem to converge, and sadly so, is on ethnic ground. As when they do, spontaneously I suppose, reclaim Iraq’s Arab-Islamic cultural heritage (Paragraph 6) instead of promoting the more obviously patriotic idea of Kurdish-Arab-Islamic identity. This can only stir up Kurdish intransigence and Kurdish separatism. (Kurdish greed is being exorbitant enough with its claims to Iraqi presidency, borders and population reshaping, monopoly on oil resources, and own armed forces.)

Following is the text of the statement [6 Muharram 1426 / 15 February 2005]–for the Arabic original text see here:

The Anti-Occupation Patriotic Iraqi Forces met at the Um-al-Qura Mosque on 15 February 2005 to discuss the current stage and its ramifications at various levels. The participants examined proposals aimed at re-establishing Iraq's unity and full sovereignty. They announced that they would deal with the issues of national consensus, which these forces have been calling for since the beginning of the occupation, and the drafting of the constitution on the following foundations:

1. Drawing up a clear, specific, announced and binding timetable in accordance with international guarantees for the withdrawal of all forms of occupation forces from Iraq.

2. Abolishing the principle of sectarian, racial and ethnic quotas and adopting the principle of citizenship and equal rights and duties under the law.

3. Acknowledging the principle of the Iraqi people's right to reject the occupation, recognizing the Iraqi resistance and its legitimate right to defend the country and its resources, and renouncing violence which targets innocent Iraqis, public institutions and places of worship including mosques, husayniyahs, churches and all holy sites.

4. The recent elections were not fully legitimate since they were held in accordance with the notorious State Administration Law [the Bremer-designed TAL, contested by Sistani himself] and not within the legal or security framework. The elections were boycotted by a large number of people and rigging took place. Therefore, the administration emerging from these elections does not have the right to sign any treaty which violates Iraq's sovereignty, territorial integrity and the unity of its people, economy and resources.

5. Adopting democracy and elections as the only option for a peaceful rotation of power. Creating the atmosphere and drawing up laws which ensure the political process is carried out impartially, transparently and under neutral international supervision.

6. Underlining Iraq's national, Arab and Islamic identity and standing firmly against every call that might harm this identity.

7. Releasing all detainees, particularly women, from the prisons of the occupation and interim government and halting non-stop raids and human rights violations across Iraq. Demanding the reconstruction of devastated Iraqi cities and compensating their citizens justly.

All of the forces urge other patriotic forces which endorse the above mentioned foundations to sign this statement in favour of all our national causes to unify the entire patriotic forces in Iraq and their positions.

[signed] The Anti-Occupation Patriotic Forces

Signatories: 1-al-Sadr's Current; 2-The al-Khalesiyya [Shia] School; 3-Association of Muslim Scholars; 4-Patriotic Frontfor the Liberation of Iraq [umbrella organization of several groups, predominantly Arab nationalists, including former Baathists]; 5-Iraqi Patriotic Founding Congress; 6-Popular Council for Culture and Arts;7-Nasserite Vanguard Party; 8-Council of Woman's Will; 9-People's Unity Party [former pro-Ba'ath communists]; 10 Movement of the Arab Nationalist Current; 11-Party of Reform, Justice and Democracy; 12-United Iraq Party; 13-Islamic Bloc; 14-Nationalist Democratic Party; 15-United Patriotic Movement; 16-Regroupment for Iraq; 17-Progressive Union of Iraqi Students; 18-Arab Regroupment in Kirkuk; 19-Popular Nationalist Party; 20-Arab Socialist Movement (Patriotic Command); 21-Union of republic's Women; + seven individual personalities.

Richard Falk, On Power-Sharing

2005-02-23T20:14:00.000+01:00

Ending the Ordeal of Iraqi Occupation
By Richard Falk
February 21, 2005

...
The essence of the difficulty involves ending the American occupation as soon as possible without provoking a bloody civil war likely to end with the re-imposition of an oppressive form of Baathist rule objectionable to the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. (...) It is significant, as well, that only a week before the elections the United Iraqi Alliance removed from its listing of campaign goals, 'an end to foreign occupation.' No reasons were given, but it seems rather obvious that in the existing situation the Sunni-led insurgency would quickly prevail without the protection of American troops. At the same time, the earlier presence of such a goal suggests that the Shi'ia movement is united with the insurgents in its commitment to end the occupation, and recover Iraq for the Iraqis. If negotiations between political leaders representing the main constituencies could affirm this common goal, and then ask themselves how best to reach such an outcome, there might yet be found a way to end foreign occupation without initiating civil strife.
Looked at from an insurgent perspective, the persistence of bloodshed and occupation cannot be a happy prospect. Their best scenario would be more of the same, surely a road to nowhere. It seems clear that the objectives of the resistance are to end the occupation in a manner that gives to the Sunnis and their allies in Iraq a major role in shaping the future of the country. But if this role is perceived by their adversaries as leading to the reimposition of Sunni authoritarian rule achieved by violence directed at civilians it will only extend the occupation indefinitely, and might even lend it legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis and the outside world. If the insurgent leadership even now signals a willingness to deal politically with the future of Iraq, and shows an interest in working out a power-sharing arrangement at the top, then there exists at least a slim possibility for a united effort to end the occupation without confronting Iraq and the world with the prospect of civil war. (...) Delay by the resistance in entering the Iraqi political process seems likely to encourage the United States to establish a permanent military presence in the country with the acquiescence of groups under threat. It may have been justifiable for Sunni elements to boycott the elections but it is self-destructive for the Iraqi resistance to behave as if its only option is spill civilian blood of their Iraqi countrymen and innocent foreign observers.

Consociational Democracy for Iraq - the hasty dismissals

2005-02-12T04:20:00.000+01:00

It will be soon two years since UCLA sociology professor Andreas Wimmer expeditiously and carelessly dismissed all prospects for an Iraqi consociational democracy ( Download pdf, "Democracy and Ethno-Religious Conflict in Iraq," paper presented at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University, May 5, 2003: pp. 16-17):

Most foreign policy makers currently seem to favor a power sharing arrangement for the future Iraq, such as the so-called consociational democracy.
…
At first sight, Iraq seems to fulfill several conditions that political scientists have identified as favorable for the establishment of power sharing arrangements: a small overall population size; a small number of ethno-religious segments; and a high degree of control of elites over their future voters. More importantly, Iraq’s oil should provide a good enough resource basis for allowing a generous policy of inclusion and power sharing. An escalation of distributive conflicts is easier to avoid in such circumstances than in a country of all pervasive poverty. However, Iraq lacks a political culture of moderation and compromise that many see as a necessary condition for a power-sharing arrangement to work in a sustainable way. If power relations between the groups change, leaders may not be prepared to re-negotiate compromise and the consociational regime breaks apart. This has been the case in Lebanon and many other countries with power-sharing arrangements. In fact, as one researcher has remarked, "the list of cases where consociational arrangements applied reads like an obituary page."

If this is the objection then it is one that is very precipitate. It is one that pays no attention to cultural, nationalist, Islamist, and even sectarian incentives for moderation and compromise. It fails to taking in the view that the "perils of cultural fragmentation" amongst which "a foreign threat" is effective at helping to motivate this sort of collaboration (Lijphart, Arend. 1971. "Cultural Diversity and Political Integration," Canadian Journal of Political Science IV:1 (March), p. 12.). Iraq nationalists--Sunni Arabs and Shi’i Arabs, the Sadrists in particular--have every reason for moderation and compromise in order for them to kick out the invader. And so do Iraq Islamists—probably more than 75% of the country’s Shi’a, 50% at least of its Arab Sunna, and up to 25% of Iraqi Kurdistan’s political forces. Finally, aren’t Iraq Sunnis—Arabs and Kurds--strong enough to convince the Shi’ites of the advantages of consociationalism, in general, and the equal sharing of power between the two main confessions, in particular?

Wimmer imagines the following remedy:

To substitute for a culture of moderation and compromise, a strong outside hand may be needed to bring the parties together when they cannot agree on how to divide the cake and, if necessary, to enforce a compromise and raise the costs of defection. In Northern Ireland, the British and Irish government have effectively forced the conflicting parties into a "coercive consociationalism." Without similar coercion over a prolonged period of time, it will take only a few months in Iraq for the Kurdish North to declare itself independent and Kirkuk its capital, for the Shii to establish a de-facto independent state ruled by and alliance of clergy, tribal elders and urban bazaaris. If a power sharing arrangement is what Iraqis and American foreign policy makers choose as the country’s political system of the future, the centripetal drive will have to come from the outside.
…
The alternatives are two: either to hand control over Iraq’s democratization to another body with more legitimacy, such as the United Nations, or to favor a different institutional designwith less centripetal pull than a power-sharing arrangement.

While Wimmer agrees at least on the U.S. military presence in Iraq being part of the problem, rather than of the solution, he apparently can’t conceive any legitimacy beyond the United Nations’; in any event, not the legitimacy imagined by a Middle East connoisseur like Patrick Seale:

An outside power cannot easily impose a political system on a country against the wishes of its inhabitants. Elections are meaningless in the absence of some form of national reconciliation. In all this, Iraq's neighbors can play a helpful role. They can host meetings of Iraqi political leaders. They can provide guarantees to beleaguered communities. They can mediate a cease-fire or a truce between warring parties. And they can persuade militant groups to hold their fire.
They could even offer to send peacekeeping troops into Iraq to replace American and British forces. Iran and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Syria and Jordan all have an interest in a stable Iraq, at peace with itself and its neighbors, and free from foreign influence.

In other words, we’re going to need two equal "strong outside hands"--a Shi’i and a Sunni one.

Before the Election Results

2005-02-09T20:25:00.000+01:00

Sadr reaches out to Iraqi Sunni clerics for coordination
www.chinaview.cn
2005-02-08 04:46:01

BAGHDAD, Feb. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraq's firebrand Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who had called for a nationwide rebellion against US-led forces last year, reached out to Sunni clerics for coordination, spokesman for a Sunni association said on Monday. "A delegation from the office of Sadr visited the headquarters of the Muslim Scholars Association and met with Harith al-Dhari, head of the association, for coordination between the two parties," said Abdul Salam al-Kubaisy at a press conference. Kubaisy declined to give further details but said the talks were concentrating on coordination between the two factions on Iraqi affairs in the current situation. "We would welcome any national comprehensive dialogue built on methodological bases and the separation between resistance and terrorism, because some are trying to relate the Iraqi resistance to Zarqawi group and loyalists of the former regime," said Kubaisy. "The dialogue should lead to the withdrawal of the Americans from our country," he said.
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New at FPIF:

How Much Power Will the New Iraqi Government Really Have?
By Stephen Zunes
February 8, 2005

Much attention was paid in the run-up to the January 30 elections in Iraq regarding how the lack of security in much of the country, combined with the decision by major Sunni Arab parties to boycott in protest of recent U.S. attacks on several major urban areas, could thereby skew the results and compromise the resulting government’s credibility. Related concerns include the prospect of this election and the government that emerges exacerbating the divisions between Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Perhaps an even bigger question is what kind of power this new government will actually have. It also remains to be seen as to whether the United States will allow the new government likely to be dominated by Shiite parties with a strong Islamist and nationalist agenda to assert their authority. Will the United States really defend freedom and democratic rule in Iraq if it results in a government that pursues policies seen to be contrary to American strategic and economic interests? Or like Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the absence of any operational, financial, or logistical links to al-Qaidawill "the establishment of democracy in Iraq" prove to be yet another deception of the American public in order to justify the U.S. takeover of that oil-rich nation?
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Thought provoking blogging in Another Day in the Empire:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Enlists his Family for Suicide Missions
Kurt Nimmo
February 08, 2005

If you were a radical fundamentalist Muslim, determined to wage holy war against the United States and Israel, would it make any sense to kill fellow Muslims, possible comrades in the struggle, and target influential Islamic clerics? Let’s say Muslims invaded the United States, determined to convert all us infidels to Islam, as the Strausscons say they want to do, wouldn’t it be not only counterproductive but also completely irrational for Catholics to run around blowing up Protestant churches or assassinating Lutheran religious leaders when the enemy is obviously the Islamic invaders? Such behavior would serve absolutely no purpose.
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Moreover, once again thanks to Seymour Hersh, we know, and the Pentagon has confirmed, U.S. covert operations are under way in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere in the neighborhood, this in addition to Israel’s covert ops. How do we know Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is not a U.S. or Israeli covert op contrivance? And why is this possibility never mentioned by the corporate media? Well, of course, it is not mentioned because the corporate media gets all its information from the Bush administration and the Pentagon. Everything else is dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Remarkably, this passes for "journalism."
For my devalued dollar, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as a person operating in Iraq, does not exist.
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From the Arab American Institute:

The Challenges Facing Post-Election Iraq
James Zogby
February 7, 2005

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Even before the final tallies are announced, the attitudes of Iraq's electorate can be culled from an exclusive pre-election poll commissioned by Abu Dhabi Television and conducted by Zogby International of New York (ADTV/ZI). The poll helps to identify voter concerns and reveals details of the challenges facing the new Iraqi government.

A Deeply Divided Nation
The ADTV/ZI poll's projections of between 43% and 60% turnout were borne out in the election, so too was the sectarian divide in voting patterns. While some US officials have trumpeted the turnout rate, comparing it to US numbers, such comparisons are invalid and dangerous. The turnout, itself, was sectarian, with 80% of Shi'a and 69% of Kurds indicating their intention to vote, while 76% of Sunni Arabs stated that they would definitely not vote. The different expectations and motivations of each group were also clear. Shi'a felt empowered and were voting for control of the government, and Kurds were voting as an expression of their autonomy. The Sunni Arab failure to vote was a function not only of threats, but a clear expression of their growing sense of disenfranchisement. This is a dangerous divide that must be closed. If the winners do not act to enfranchise the Sunni Arab community and create a unifying Iraqi national agenda, the outcome of this election could serve to deepen the sectarian split and exacerbate the insurgency.
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Two key sets of numbers to note are the majority of Sunni Arabs who say that the violence in Iraq is legitimate resistance (53%) and the substantial majority of Arabs, both Sunni (82%) and Shi'a (69%) who want the US to leave, now that an elected government is in place. Only Kurds want the US to remain (51%) until "safety and security are restored to the country." Of particular interest here are the attitudes of the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. Their positions on both the insurgency and US presence are closer to those of the disenfranchised Sunni Arab community, than they are to other segments of the Shi'a community. It should be recalled that insurgents in both of these groups fought together against the US within the last year. Depending on the direction taken by the new Iraqi government and the US military, this tinderbox could be re-ignited once again.

On 1 February, Peter Galbraith, a long-time advocate of Kurdish
independence, was given the lead space in The New York Times to repeat his
call for division. The very next day, Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, repeated his argument that "the
only workable government would be a confederation with three largely autonomous regions". On 7 February, it was the Wall Street Journal’s turn to give editorial space to Kanan Makiya, the most prominent Iraqi advocates of US-style federalism for Iraq, one who wants Iraq neither Arab nor Islamic,
only pro-American (see Edward Said’s critique from 2002):

The Shiite Obligation
By Kanan Makiya
February 7, 2005

The size of the turnout, irrespective of the outcome, establishes that the Iraqi elections will go down in the history books as a defining event in the future of the Middle East. For those millions of ordinary Iraqis who risked making the ultimate sacrifice by braving the bombs and the gruesome killings, this moment is what the 2003 war was all about.

In spite of the many failings of the occupation regime that ended in June 2004 … Therefore I am both a happy man today, and a worried one.
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When the Shiites become the majority in a duly elected Iraqi National Assembly, they will inherit the great burden of a fractured and deeplyatomized country filled with minorities, all of whom have known suffering of one sort or another. How will they shoulder that responsibility?

A fateful moment of truth came in March last year, during the debate over the interim basic constitution. A conflict erupted not over the authority of the interim government or its shape, but rather over the very distant and abstract notion of how the permanent constitution should be ratified. At issue was the all-important question of minority rights and federalism. Specifically, the most contentious item of the draft was Article 61(c), which held that no future permanent constitution could be ratified if two-thirds of voters in any three governorates rejected it.

Article 61(c) embodied a principle previously widely accepted by the democratic Iraqi opposition in exile; namely, that an Iraqi democracy had to be principally about minority rights, and only afterwards bout majority rule. In other words, the rule of law took precedence over public opinion and populist sentiment. After intensive discussion, the Iraqi Governing Council succeeded in reaching a consensus, and the crisis was overcome. Nevertheless, the incident showed that the idea of Iraq as a pluralist and accommodating whole was at odds with the Shiite sense of political entitlement arising from their own previous suffering. The most fundamental truth of post-Saddam politics in Iraq is that only the Shiites are in a position to stop the legacy of dictatorshipfrom snatching victory out of the jaws of its own demise in the shape of escalating confessional and ethnic violence in the years to come.I said that in 1993, but the point is a thousand times more relevant today.
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The debate over Article 61(c) prefigures the most fundamental political struggle that will take place in the National Assembly ofthe new Iraq -- the struggle over what it means to be an Iraqi. As the majority in the coming National Assembly, the Shiite leadership will be at the forefront of this struggle. The selfish sectarian impulse, however understandable and natural, needs to be turned on its head into a new political idea that embraces the whole country, one that is neither Arab nor Islamic, but Iraqi.

From the Islamist CDLR forum, strongly critical views of Shi’ite strategies:

Iran and Iraq – Blunders of the Ayatollahs
Yamin Zakaria
February 5, 2005

How quickly the people have forgotten the staged celebration in Baghdad as the US soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein symbolising victory. It was the aerial shots (ignored by the mainstream media who focused on the close-up pictures of individuals) that showed the real image: in a city of five million, the small square was not even full. Claims of eight million voters turning out or 72% turn out (note 72% of the registered voters as opposed to the eligible voters) in the recent Iraqi election has already been retracted; and if millions did turn out where are the aerial shots showing the masses lining up to vote, CNN-TV and certainly Fox-TV would not have missed that opportunity. Despite the media propaganda a significant section of the Shi’ite population including Moqtada as-Sadr and his followers did not vote. Note, the mainstream media only asked those who voted giving a close-up picture as opposed to an aerial view!
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On the contrary the spin doctors forget; - the voters were also propelled by the same objective as the so-called ‘insurgents’ (freedom fighters) which is to get rid of the US occupation. The voters opted for a political route believing that once a Sistani-endorsed government comes to power it will have legitimacy and the authority to ask the US to leave. But why would the US construct this election as a positive outcome for George Bush?
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In the unlikely event, if the UIA (that will eventually form the core of the new Iraqi government) confronts the US on behalf of its electorate demanding its immediate withdrawal, the US would retaliate. She should start to push her agents notably the Kurdish elements, likes of Iyad Alawi and other treacherous elements firmly embedded inside Iraq and then start a campaign of assassination of the US opponents which would be easily blamed on the Iraqi freedom fighters. It is only then the Shi’ite followers of Sistani might realise that political clout is ineffective without the backing of force as other Shi’ite leaders like Moqtada as-Sadr has already pointed out.

But, how does Iran fit into this equation? … Instead Khamenei has gambled with elections, playing the political game with the US may prove to be blunder in the long run. It is still not too late for Iran to alter its posture and ensure that the UIA pursues a policy to actively expel the US and exposing the treacherous elements within.
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Not only Iran should develop Nuclear weapons but declare its possession and the willingness to use such weapons in self-defence. Every nation has the right to defend itself. The only destabilising force is the US presence in the region; they are the real foreign fighters or state terrorists. Iran should help to supply nations with these weapons as the US supplies the illegitimate state of Israel; and should threaten to flatten Tel-Aviv if their cities are threatened by the US-Israeli forces; - then observe the neo-con hawks transform into neo-chickens!

Once the battle is brought closer to their door step their brave words behind the US military firepower would soon be replaced with the surfacing of their shylock nature. This is not aggression but legitimate self-defence considering the Iraq episode, the US cannot be trusted it always speaks with the two tongues as the Native Americans would tell you after centuries of persecution.

After the Election

2005-02-02T01:05:00.000+01:00

The reasons, that Palestinians and Iraqis lined up and voted -- January 9 and January 30, respectively -- under occupation, are discussed in:

What did the Palestinians and Iraqis Vote For?
By Patrick Seale
February 3, 2005

...
What is the reality behind these elections? What did Palestinians and Iraqis actually vote for?

In both cases, the elections took place under foreign occupation. This inevitably meant that they were neither totally fair nor wholly legitimate. In Iraq, in particular, there were few polling stations or foreign observers. Many Iraqis were afraid that they would not get their monthly food rations if they did not vote. Some said that, in order to collect their rations, they had to sign the voter registration forms.

Nevertheless, those Palestinians and Iraqis who decided to cast their vote, and those who were able to get to the polling stations in spite of the difficulties and dangers, did so for one overriding reason: to get rid of the foreign occupiers.
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In Iraq, the United States has patently not given up its ambition for bases, for control of oil and reconstruction, for the establishment of a government friendly to the U.S. and to Israel -- in a word, Washington’s objective would seem to be to convert Iraq into a U.S. client state by means of a long-term American military presence.
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Just as Mahmud Abbas is having to negotiate with Islamic and secular militant groups to persuade them to give his "softly-softly" approach a chance, so any new Iraqi government will have to negotiate with the various strands of the shadowy Iraqi resistance, including the Ba’th party, the Islamic factions, and cells of former army officers.

None of these negotiations in the Palestinian territories or in Iraq are likely to succeed, nor will they bring about security and order for any length of time, unless they hold out the prospect of an Israeli and an American withdrawal.

In The Guardian:
"No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis' hostility to US occupation."

The Vietnam turnout was good as well
By Sami Ramadani
February 1, 2005

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On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of he Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.
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In Salon.com:
Would Sunni Arabs loose no matter what they do--guess who's wishful thinking is this? Would they even if they decide finally to have a political strategy; namely, one of equal power-sharing between all the Shiites and Sunnis of Iraq?

The Shiite Earthquake
By Juan Cole
February 1, 2005

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The guerrilla war being waged by some Sunni Arabs will not end with the elections. Their leadership is committed to destabilizing the country, pushing the Americans back out, and mounting yet another coup. The resistance consists largely of ex-Baath military along with some religious radicals (very few of whom are foreigners). They have enough munitions, money and know-how to fight for years, though in the end they will lose. The Sunni Arab populace continues largely to support the guerrillas. Over half in a recent poll said that attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq are legitimate.
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Note, Cole informs us that "Sunnis constitute some 90 percent of the Muslims in the world, but are a minority of 20 percent in Iraq." It is not clear whether he means that world Sunnis are ethnically Arabs or that Sunnis make only 20 percent of Iraq's population--this could be some lapsus.

In the International Relations Center (IRC):

The Future of Iraq and U.S. Occupation
By Noam Chomsky
January 26, 2005

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What I’ve just read from the business press the last couple of days probably reflects the thinking in Washington and London: "Uh well, okay, we’ll let them have a government, but we’re not going to pay any attention to what they say." In fact the Pentagon announced at the same time two days ago: we’re keeping 120,000 troops there into at least 2007, even if they call for withdrawal tomorrow.
And the propaganda is very evident right in these articles. You can even write the commentary now: We just have to do it because we have to accomplish our mission of bringing democracy to Iraq. If they have an elected government that doesn’t understand that, well, what can we do with these dumb Arabs, you know? Actually that’s very common because look, after all, the U.S. has overthrown democracy after democracy, because the people don’t understand. They follow the wrong course. So therefore, following the mission of establishing democracy, we’ve got to overthrow their governments.
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Voices for a Lebanese-style constitutional solution

2005-01-11T01:18:00.000+01:00

Here’s some good news despite all the tragedies:

If you’re Arabic speaking, please read my comment "Scenario Number Seven" on the nearly revolution going on in Arab political thinking; namely, in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo (director Abdel-Moneim Said) and the Arab League (Secretary General Amr Moussa).

Even expert Juan Cole (1/4/2005) is arguing for the Lebanese solution, in spite of himself of course. He’s arguing (with urban, population and economic intermingling) basically in the way late Edward Said did against territorial partitioning in Israel/Palestine, although Said did so while advocating for a bi-confessional state, not for some one-man-one-vote state and, therefore, not for some eventual Palestinian tyranny over Israeli minority.

Finally, please read the excellent article of Patrick Seale in The Daily Star:

Iraq: first reconciliation, then elections
By Patrick Seale
January 10, 2005

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On the contrary, a six-month postponement, or an even longer one, could create much-needed breathing space in which to clarify a number of unresolved issues that, at present, cast a dark shadow over the Iraqi political scene. Some of these issues are: the future of American forces in Iraq; the prospects for an Iraqi Army; the role of the Sunni community in the institutions of the state; the possibility of national reconciliation around a blueprint for Iraq's future; and the role of Iraq's neighbors. The biggest uncertainty in Iraq today concerns American intentions. To put it bluntly, does the U.S. want to stay or leave? This is the most pressing question U.S. President George W. Bush will have to answer at the start of his new presidential term on Jan. 20.
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To address legitimate Sunni fears, a new constitutional formula needs to be found in which the rights of all communities are guaranteed. Like several Arab states, Iraq is a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities each concerned about the future. The U.S. occupation has sharpened differences between the communities, reviving the specter of civil war. The answer might be to devise a system in which posts and power in a new Iraq are shared equitably between the communities, on the model of the National Pact that Lebanon adopted in 1943 to satisfy the aspirations of Muslims and Christians.

Related readings:

Minority Retort
Iraq's Sunni violence may partly be due to fear
By Michael Young
December 9, 2004

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In 1943 Lebanon adopted a "consociational" system, where the religious communities are represented in parliament and in the national bureaucracy according to a ratio not necessarily reflecting their demographic weight. The idea is to give all groups a protected stake in the state. Today, that ratio is 50-50, so that although Christians are a minority, they nevertheless have half the seats in the legislature, and still hold the presidency. Everyone understands that if communal representation in parliament were decided by majority vote, even based on proportional representation, the minorities would consider this the beginning of an irreversible slide, and would probably abandon Lebanon, resort to violence, or both. This is the essence of what is known as the minority syndrome—the belief that any loss of power by one's own group in a multi-communal society will ultimately lead to the eradication of that group.
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That doesn't alter the fact that the solution in Iraq is indeed a devolution of power and other mechanisms permitting its minorities, particularly Sunnis, to have a say in a state that they will not consider an existential threat. That means the hard conventions of majority rule may have to be reconsidered and replaced with something guaranteeing effective minority representation. The election plan for Iraq fails utterly in this regard, and the insurgency will be fortified as a consequence.

More of the Cole watching

2004-12-28T17:27:00.000+01:00

Self-congratulation and heartily endorsement of US initiative. Juan Cole, Monday, December 27, 2004:

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Bush administration has been exploring with Iraqi figures like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the election commission the possibility of a set-aside for Sunni Arabs in the parliament to be elected on January 30. The American overtures have met substantial resistance, but not complete rejection, writes Steven Weisman.
Of course, I heartily endorse this initiative, and had proposed it myself in early December.

In "How to Save the Iraqi Elections", we are being reminded of the fact that he has been actually improving his proposal from 20%, in November 19, up to "generous" 25% by December 5--"generous" indeed compared to the only 10% of his rather stingy guest, Andrew Arato:

Upcoming voting is headed toward train wreck unless U.S. sets aside legislative seats for Sunnis.

/…/
Assuming the security problems do not prove fatal to the elections, they can now be salvaged politically only in one way. The interim government, which has already declared martial law, must pass a decree ordering a onetime set-aside of a generous 25 percent of seats for predominantly Sunni Muslim parties.

This sort of quota is regrettable, but it is the only solution to the crisis. It should not form a precedent, but rather should be done as an emergency measure just this once. Once the parliament meets to craft a constitution, it is important that it create an upper house that somehow over-represents the Sunni Arabs and Kurds, so as to prevent a tyranny of the Shiite majority.

The American-designed government, with a one-chamber legislature, ensures permanent Shiite dominance, likely by religious parties, which contains the seeds of future disaster for Iraq.

Cole is desperately trying a "regrettable" supplementation, a "once occurrence" as he says, into his ethno-centric constitutional system; that is, he is making a small concession to more local practices. But, how would 20% or 25%--make it 49%--of parliament members and constitution legislator prevent "a tyranny of the Shi’ite majority"? How would parliament decide on some "over-representation" of the Sunnis in some upper house if the majority of parliament members are Shi’ites? And suppose they agree to do so, how would an equal representation in senat alone stop Shi’ite tyranny in parliament and thereby in the whole balance between the two chambers? Well, that remains something of a mystery.

USA The Model

2004-12-27T15:57:00.000+01:00

Juan Cole wrote in his blog (11-28-04) that Iraqis were in effect electing a constitutional assembly and that the main business of the new parliament was to craft a permanent constitution:

So, the analogy would be to 1789. What would the new American Republic's chances have been if the Southern states had not been able to send delegates to the constitutional convention, and so had been excluded from having an input into it? All sorts of compromises had to be hammered out in 1789, concerning southern slavery and how to count a slave for census purposes, etc. If the South hadn't been able to show up, the northern states would simply have ignored those issues, and the secession of those states might have come 70 years early. Would the North have been able to resist it so successfully at that point?

Likewise, Sunni Arabs have a big stake in the permanent constitution. Will it give Kirkuk and its oil to the Kurds, depriving Arabs of any share in those revenues? Will it ensconce Shiite law as the law of the land? Will it keep a unicameral parliament, in which Shiites would have a permanent majority, or will it create an upper chamber where Sunnis might be better represented, on the model of the US senate? If all those issues go against the Sunnis because they aren't there to argue their positions, it would set Iraq up for guerrilla war into the foreseeable future.

Just tell us, Professor Cole, how a one-man-one-vote based election is likely to result, constitutionally speaking, in limiting the Shi'ite influence in the country to 50% and guaranteeing the other 50% influence to Sunnis? As far as I know upper chambers in the USA were not so much about religious faith or even ethnicity as they were about territory. So how relevant is the model to us Middle Easterners? Why this fixation to the individual-based and state-centric Hamiltonian federalism? Why should we in the first hand prefer a Kanan Makiya-like federalism, not an Edward Said inspired bi-confessionalism? Why should we worship the US model?

Related readings:

'Staying the Course' Won't Do
By Patrick J. Buchanan
December 27, 2004

Iraq Rejects U.S. Talk of Adjusting Vote Result
By Luke Baker
December 26, 2004

Iraqi Elections
By Phyllis Bennis
December 20, 2004

Happy 2005

2004-12-26T01:29:00.000+01:00

Omar Bouragba 1993

Cole's sectarian view of elections in Iraq

2004-12-16T01:41:00.000+01:00

Juan Cole's "Lebanon-like" solution : put aside 20% of seats in parliament for the Sunni Arabs.

If elections are held in January, I see only one way to avoid disaster. This would be some sort of emergency decree by the current government that sets aside, say, 20% of seats in parliament for the Sunni Arabs. This procedure would seat Sunni Arab candidates in order of the popularity of their lists and in order of their rank within the lists on which they run. But the results would essentially be "graded on a curve." In a way, this procedure is already being followed for women, who are guaranteed 30% of seats. This solution is Lebanon-like and is not optimal, but it might be the best course if long-term sectarian and ethnic conflict is to be avoided. Remember, the first thing the new parliament will do is craft a permanent constitution. You want Sunni Arabs sitting at that table, or else.

No Mr Cole, a Lebanon-like non-sectarian solution is: leave 50% of seats for Sunni Iraqis - including Sunni Kurds.

Related readings:

Why elections in Iraq are lose-lose proposition
By Edwin Black
December 13, 2004

Iraqi election could lead to sectarian war, some say
By Tom Lasseter
December 11, 2004

Sectarian electoral maneuvers may break Iraq apart
By Mustafa Malik
November 27, 2004

Ethnic Iraqi federalism rejected
By Ahmed Janabi
January 10, 2004

The Specter of Sectarian and Ethnic Unrest in Iraq
By Nicholas Blanford
January 7, 2004

IN SEARCH OF BALANCE
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Despite assurances from the Shiite community, Sunnis remain wary of Shiite political aspirations. "If it happens that the Shia and Kurds rule Iraq, the country will never be safe and stable, not for hundreds of years," said Sheikh Abd al-Karim al-Qubaysi, a prominent Sunni cleric in Baghdad. "This is not a threat. The Sunnis are not declaring war. We always call for brotherhood and dialogue. But we will not allow anyone to cancel out our role in Iraq. Just as Iraq needs Shia clerics and leaders, so Iraq needs Sunni clerics and leaders. There must be a balance between the two. Iraq will never calm down unless the two sides are equal."

Resignated Cole

2004-12-11T21:52:00.000+01:00

Friday (12/10/2004 05: 11:03 PM), Juan Cole wrote on Sunni Arab view of boycotting elections:

This way of thinking ["Taking part in elections like these means nothing but to grant legitimacy to a completely illegal situation."] is completely self-defeating and also historically inaccurate. Nehru would not have been prime minister of an independent India if the Congress Party had not fought elections under British colonial domination. Sistani has the right idea here.
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In short, Al-Dhari is wrong that the guerrilla fighters have achieved much positive; he is wrong that cooperating with elections cannot result in independence; he is wrong that the boycott movement is significant outside the Sunni Arabs. The only thing he is right about is that the technical preparations for the elections are problematic.
I was at a public event on Thursday night and someone asked me why the Sunni Arabs didn't just take the best deal they could get. I replied that they think they are the real majority of the country, or that is the public pose (requiring them to invent a million Iranian Shiite infiltrators to explain all those extra Shiites). They think they can push the Americans around and maybe even push them out of the country. They think once the US is gone, they will have a better, not worse chance, at regaining something like their former political ascendence.

In other world, to Cole, Iraqi Sunnis "seem to be living in a dangerous fantasy land." Well, I would say instead that they are living in a double nightmare: option 1, an American for ever lasting occupation; option 2, a Shiite inverted confessional oppression. Indeed, both parts have obviously chosen sectarian politics; numerically conscious Shiites are for the electoral one-man-one-vote majority rule oriented path, and the less secure Sunni minority for the patriotic but potentially authoritarian armed struggle.

Juan Cole gives an impression of fatalistic resignation. Not only does he seem confident in future, US monitored, electoral outcomes, but he gives eventual majority rule and Sistani’s strategy for Shiite confessional hegemony his blessing. But, why "for Christ’s sake" can't all independence forces join in a common vision of future and common strategy of resistance to occupation? Why can't Shiites and Sunnis agree on sharing power (fifty fifty) prior to elections; why can’t they secure genuinely Iraqi elections and bi-confessional federal outcomes?

Can "cooperating with elections result in independence" as Cole says? Yes, but only if prior to it Iraqi independence forces are cooperating with each other. And it’s definitely not or not solely about technical electoral issues, but about basic visions of future Iraq and the sort of democracy most suitable for the country—conventional liberal Western or consociational and Lebanon inspired one.

Refreshing our memories of Edward Said

2004-12-07T01:43:00.000+01:00

Apparently, the year that passed since Edward Said died saw a certain revival of the one state solution among Palestinians, among the Fateh Palestinians for example. It seems that even those who preferred, as Said did most of his lifetime, the two-states’ solution for Palestine, felt that the reality on the ground in Israel/Palestine defeated this particular solution. It seems that those who were committed to the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, also realized, as Said did for some time, that a two states structure as such held no hope for any reasonable or feasible solution for this particular problem, which is at the heart of the conflict and may be the key to its settlement. Yet, the two-state, not one-state, solution is or seems to be the only starting point for trade-offs and the only realistic path to Said’s very ideal of a bi-national state in Israel/Palestine in the future. Moreover, Said’s realistic utopia is badly in need of reformulation in unequivocally non-secular terms, if ever it is to become equally attractive for Palestinians and Israelis.

***

When the Christian intellectuals introduced the idea of secularism into the Middle East they translated wrongly the word secularism into Arabic language. One can only speculate on whether it was naively or demagogically wrong. Resulting Arabic term al’ilmânia, which literally means "the scientific view," was not as such entirely alien to the concept of secularism but nonetheless far away from being identical with it. Some of this local representation has been hanging there for a long time and it even became an integral part of Arabic intellectual equipment. The late and to us so much cherished Edward Said was no exception. The way he used his fetish like word secular never stopped surprising, puzzling, causing general confusion. Indeed, even he called things scientific "secular."

Naturally, the "scientific view" has been specified and thoroughly radicalized in this context. "Secular" in Said’s quite peculiar language use came to designate not only "true intellectualism," anti-dogmatism and critical oppositional practice, but as it were an entire knowledge-theoretical program – worldliness, doubt, outsider view, ironic attitude to truth, anti-essentialism, dissension, systematic suspicion of cultural phenomena, to mention only few aspects. That is not to say that this program needs to be translated, which does occur in Said’s own theorizing, into some fixed political philosophy, whether it be hostility to nationalism, communitarianism and identity politics or advocation for hybridity, cosmopolitanism and liberal individualism. Historical-epistemological "secularism" need not necessarily imply ethical-political secularism.

Judging Said’s posture in the secularism issue need not in the least proceed from this latter’s literary criticism and personal definition of secularity; it should instead proceed from the usual--legal, institutional, constitutional--meaning of secularism. In other words, all that is needed here for an assessment is observing Said’s concrete political activism. That is, one shouldn’t blink the fact of Said’s self-evident internationalism, multiculturalism, (not least Palestinian) identity politics, inter-confessionalism, and postcolonial communitarianism. And if by any chance one is to look here for "inconsistencies" they are surely to be find elsewhere; being "committed to Palestinian nationalism while abhorring by the very notion of nationalism," was simply Said’s way of consistent inter-nationalism-- Ilan Pappe’s recollection power badly deteriorated only a year after Said’s death.

***

Political theorist Fred Dallmayr (1997, 50-52) once commented on the emerging theme in Said of an exodus or exile from identity, of a diasporic existence beneath or beyond spatial and temporal constraints, and the cultural critic assuming the role of a cosmopolitan wanderer freely moving across time and space. Dallmayr was curious as to the political implications of Said's endorsement of nomadism:

What concrete consequences are entailed, for example, in the present Near East situation? Are Palestinians now asked to abandon their quest for a homeland and remain content with refugee camps--or with a complete dispersal into diasporic existence? Would a similar advice be offered to the Kurds or American Indians? As it seems to me--and Said would probably agree--it is always an awkwardly embarrassing matter to preach poverty to the poor or homelessness to the homeless. The message is particularly embarrassing in the present global situation, a setting dominated (as Said insists) by an imperial identity bent on homogenizing and standardizing the world. Cutting loose from local moorings, in this setting, means precisely to aid and abet this process of homogenization--that is, the production of a global nondistinction or sameness. But, if all people are the same and substitutable, then what difference does it make if the world is governed from a hegemonic center (say America)...?

F. Dallmayr drew the optimistic conclusion that "hybridity" thinking had so far only an insignificant impact on Said’s engagement and resistance to sliding into either parochial exclusivism or global vagrancy. Thus, according to Dallmayr, when it came to it Said resolutely took sides against the complacently vagrant intellectualism:

"It would be the rankest Panglossian dishonesty," Said concedes," to say that the bravura performances of the intellectual exile and the miseries of the displaced person or refugee are the same" or of the same order; for clearly there is a vast difference between "the optimistic mobility, the intellectual liveliness, and the logic of daring" marking the "various theoreticians on whose work I have drawn" and on the other hand "the massive dislocations, waste, misery, and horrors endured in our century's migrations and mutilated lives."

Indeed, discussing at the time "hybridity and Arab identiy" with Stephen Sheehi (Al Jadid magazine, Vol. 4, no. 22, Winter 1998), Said was careful, opposing the involuntary fact of hybridity to its utopian norm:

-- In many of your more recent works and talks, which I have heard, you seem to be stressing the notion of “hybridity” which is really important in responding to claims of authenticity by essentialist nationalists.

"Well, it is not necessarily authenticity only. It’s some notion of purity."

-- Right, essentialism.

"Right. I mean you can be hybrid and authentic at the same time."

-- I guess that is where I am going. I like the notion of hybridity but a facile reading of it offers a sort of Kantian utopianism that erases, say, the violent process of becoming that hybrid. So how does one talk about hybridity without emptying it out of that very process?

"I don’t think you can. There are people who do, like Homi Bhabha in a completely theoretical way. I don’t. The various historical processes which include imperialism, that would include crossing boundaries, migration, genocide, all of these collective experiences of involuntary or forced uprooting and dislocation, contribute to this, not some utopian idyllic state. I just don’t believe that. I am very profoundly historical in that respect. So I try to talk about it very rarely and I use it to refute those that say ‘let us return to original whatever’, original Islam, original Swedishness."

Proponents of secularism, "hybridity" and the like should be reminded here of Said’s outlook in the Kosovo issue for example (Protecting the Kosovars, The Treason of the Intellectuals)--and for that matter even of Noam Chomsky’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s. Said, while by no means sparing NATO/US bombings of Serbia, actually supported the self-determination demand of Kosovo Albanians and nothing less than that. To him,

it was imperative that the NATO bombing should stop, and a multiparty conference of all the peoples of former Yugoslavia be called to settle differences between them on the basis of self-determination for all, not just for some, or for some at the expense of others.

***

Said has always waved aside the idea of a unitary secular state in Israel/Palestine as a solution to conflict in the Middle East. He is counted among the first prominent Palestinians who adopted the idea of two-state solution and who, since the seventies in his case, argued for recognition of Israel—the PLO took formally position for first in the meeting of the Palestinian National Council, 1988. In the article The One-State Solution, 1999, he started advocating for a non-territorial ethnic-confessional federalism; for one only state for Israelis and Palestinians. This bi-national, non secular, federal state was to transform rivals into partners and allow each side to express its national identity without excluding or oppressing the other:

The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle for coexistence. In a modern state, all its members are citizens by virtue of their presence and the sharing of rights and responsibilities. Citizenship therefore entitles an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab to the same privileges and resources. A constitution and a bill of rights thus become necessary for getting beyond Square 1 of the conflict because each group would have the same right to self-determination; that is, the right to practice communal life in its own (Jewish or Palestinian) way, perhaps in federated cantons, with a joint capital in Jerusalem, equal access to land and inalienable secular and juridical rights. Neither side should be held hostage to religious extremists.

Notice only that he then wrongly called common, minimal, federal citizen rights "secular" rights; that is, wrongly when one is, as he has been, speaking of consociational democracies—a legal theoretician like John Rawls would have never spoken that way.

Interviewed by Mark Levine the same year, Said appealed to multiculturalism:

I'm very pleased to register myself under the banner of multiculturalism, not as a pastime or academic slogan, but rather as a way to work with others who are jammed together with me on a tiny territory—to bring it now to Palestine and Israel—and who so far have managed to survive by denying the full historical and political existence of the other. So I think multiculturalism can be consonant with ideals of emancipation and enlightenment if it's applied to concrete situations in which people of different cultures have not been able to live together peacefully, but in my opinion can.

***

In an interview to Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, My right of return (18 august, 2000), Said made it still more plain how much he disliked talk of secular states in Palestine/Israel.

--Two years ago you wrote an article in The New York Times endorsing a one-state solution. It seems you've come full-circle - from espousing a one secular-democratic state solution in the '70s, to accepting the two-state solution in the '80s, back to the secular-democratic idea.

"I would not necessarily call it secular-democratic. I would call it a bi-national state. I want to preserve for the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews a mechanism or structure that would allow them to express their national identity. I understand that in the case of Palestine-Israel, a bi-national solution would have to address the difference between the two collectives."

In the same interview Said referred back to the ottoman millet model as an alternative to Western secularism:

--So what you envision is a totally new situation in which a Jewish minority would live peacefully within an Arab context?

"Yes. I believe it is viable. A Jewish minority can survive the way other minorities in the Arab world survived. I hate to say it but, in a funny sort of way, it worked rather well under the Ottoman Empire, with its millet system. What they had then seems a lot more humane than what we have now."

--So as you see it, the Jews would eventually have a cultural autonomy within a pan-Arab structure?

"Pan-Arab or Mediterranean. Why should it not include Cyprus? What I would like is a kind of integration of Jews into the fabric of the larger society, which has an extraordinary staying power in spite mutilation by the nation-state. I think it can be done. There is every reason to go for the larger unit. The social organization that would be required is something I haven't really pondered, but it would be easier to organize than the separation that Mr. Barak and his advisors dream of. The genius of Arab culture was catholicism. My definition of pan-Arabism would comprise the other communities within an Arab-Islamic framework. Including the Jews."

***

Finally, in an interview with the Cairo paper Al-Ahram, only 15 months before his death, Said suggested that it was

now up to us (Palestinians) to project the idea of coexistence in two states that have natural relations with each other on the basis of sovereignty and equality.

With that he implicitly acknowledged the accords signed in Geneva only a short time after his death. With that he also rejoined Noam Chomsky’s posture. With that he made it finally clear that the two-state solution was the only serious start and realistic path to the ideal of a bi-national state.

***

Thus, our memories would be entirely untrustworthy if persisting in a fancy that Edward Said’s struggle was about some world secularization. President Bush and his "War on Terror" have proved best at that business--Christopher Hitchens, among those applauding Bush's Secular Triumph, already made this point. Said’s struggle throughout his life was about self-determination for all peoples of the world, including naturally the Palestinian people. In any case, this particular political legacy of Said’s was his obvious and manifest one to the postcolonial world.

World Wide Petition against the Escalation in Iraq.

2004-11-05T13:07:00.000+01:00

Forwarded from
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

World Wide Petition against the Escalation in Iraq. An initiative of the BRussells tribunal endorsed by the World Tribunal on Iraq

Prof. Jean Bricmont, a Belgian scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, and author on politics, who was member of the prosecution at the BRussells Tribunal, has written a short but strong statement "Stop the escalation" (see the text after this message, in English, French and Dutch). It has been signed already by several distinguished people (see underneath).

We feel that we can't wait any longer to do something. We hope that you and/or your organisation will sign this letter, giving the call of prof Bricmont the resonance it deserves and he aimed at in writing it.

Now that we know, since the evening of 28th of October 2004, from an article in the Lancet, based on a survey by Johns Hopkins University that 100.000 Iraqi's died in the war, we feel this petition is urgent, so we send it out now.

We hope you join us in our outcry over the ongoing massacres by signing this petition against the escalation.

Yours in struggle for peace.

Prof.Lieven De Cauter, Dirk Adriaensens, Hana Al Bayaty and Patrick Deboosere, on behalf of the BRussell's Tribunal committee.( www.brusselstribunal.org )
with full support of the the World Tribunal on Iraq ( www.worldtribunal.org ) of which the BRussells tribunal Committee is part.

STOP THE ESCALATION

"Excluding information from Falluja, a Lancet report of october 29 estimates that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery." (Reuters, October 28, 2004)

Far from being over, the war in Iraq has only begun. The United States do not seem to be able to defeat the Iraqi resistance with the means they have been using. But neither can they accept their setbacks. The very arrogance with which the war was declared and waged has put all their prestige at stake in Iraq and, thereby, decades of efforts to assure their world domination. The stakes are even greater than in the Vietnam war. The United States cannot get out of Iraq unless they leave behind a friendly government, but today they have so few friends in that part of the world that no democratic election can produce such a government.

As a result, one must seriously anticipate a military escalation after the elections -- immediately in case Bush is returned to office, perhaps more gradually should Kerry win. But the Democratic candidate has no more intention than Bush of withdrawing from Iraq . The U.S. government will seek to defeat the resistance by all possible means. The effort is already underway to demonize the resistance in world opinion by associating it with abductions and murders condemned by virtually the whole spectrum of political organizations in the Arab world.

We demand that the United States face up to reality, unconditionally withdraw their troops from Iraq , and draw the necessary conclusions as to the unacceptable nature of preventive war. It is an illusion to ask that the U.S. forces remain until Iraq is pacified or stabilized, because their very presence is so hated that it constitutes the main obstacle to any sort of pacification.

Meanwhile, we affirm that we shall oppose by all peaceful and legal methods every attempt to crush the Iraqi resistance by a military escalation such as was attempted during the Vietnam war. We call on all governments to grant asylum to American military personnel refusing to serve in Iraq . We shall do our best to spread all available information to counter the war propaganda, and we shall try to mobilize world public opinion, as in 2002, to demand that the United States abandon their efforts to impose a military solution on Iraq .

First provisional list of signatories (30.10.04)

Noam Chomsky, author, USA
Jean Bricmont, prof. of theoretical physics and political publicist, writer of this petition, Belgium
Lieven De Cauter, prof of philosophy, Belgium
Patrick Deboosere, demographer, Belgium
Hana Al Bayaty, film maker, Iraq/France
Dirk Adriaensens, SOS Iraq , Belgium
Ayse Berktay, WTI organiser, Turkey
Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty, author, Iraq/France
Haifa Zangana, Iraqi-Kurdish novelist and journalist, Irak/UK
Ahmedzaib Khan Mahsud, Architect / Planner, Doctoral candidate, K. U. Leuven
Dr.Haithem Alshaibani, Prof. of Physics, UAE
tareq aldelaimi, writer and political activist, Iraq
Salah Omar Al Ali, Chief Editor of Al Wifaq Al Democraty, Iraq
Ed Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Pennsylvania , economist and media analyst, USA
Michael Parenti, author, USA
William Blum, author of books on US foreign policy, Washington , DC
Richard Plunz, professor urban design, New York
Pierre Galand , Senator , Belgium
Karen Parker, attorney, USA
Amy Bartholomew, Law professor, Canada
Tom Barry, Policy Director, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) , USA
John Saxe-Fernández, Professor, Mexico
Joachim Guilliard, journalist, Germany
Alkan Kabakcioglu, Posdoctoral Fellow in Physics, University of Padova , Padova , ITALY
Erik Swyngedouw, prof of social geography, Oxford
Ur Shlonsky, Professor Geneva , Switzerland
Xavier Bekaert, theoretical physicist, Paris
Nicolas Boulanger, Chercheur en Physique Théorique, Belgium
Bruno Vitale, physicist, Geneva ( Switzerland )
Biju Mathew, Professor, USA
Anton Regenberg, former director of the Brussels Goethe Institute
Anthony Alessandrini, New York University Students for Justice in Palestine , USA
Ayca Cubukcu, Ph.D. student, Columbia University , WTI- New York organizer, New York
Madiha Tahir, student and activist, USA
Rania Jawad, Graduate Student, New York City
Gizem Arikan, Graduate Student, USA
Stephanie Schwartz, New York , NY
Ozlem Altiok, Peace Action of Denton , Texas , USA
Obie Hunt, therapy aide Manhattan Psychiatric Center , USA
Pierre Py, Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse
Janine Tillmann Py, Switserland
Silvia Cattori, Journaliste, Suisse
Adriana Hernandez Alarcon Mexico Doctor, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name México"
Aracely Cortes Galan Mexico , member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name México"
Federico Campbell, México, Journalist, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name México"
Ramsés Ancira, México, Jorunalist, member of "Not In Our Name Mexico"·
Rosa García, México, member and founder of of the organization "Not in Our Name México"
Gabriel Perez Rendon Mexico Doctor, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name México"
Annelies De Backer , Belgium
Griet Boddez, director's secretary, Belgium
Ariella Masboungi, Architect and urbanist, France
Stefan Boeykens, Architect-Engineer, Leuven, Belgium
Paul Blondeel, urban research and consultancy, Amsterdam
Daniela Peluso, Anthropologist, Canterbury , UK
Erling Fidjestøl, social worker, Norway
Kaat Boon, civil engineer architect, Brussels
Elise Christensen, Peace Council , Norway
Catherine Denis, Médecin généraliste, Belgium
Simten Cosar, Ankara , Turkey
Enrique Ferro, Peace Activist, Brussels
Behcet Akalin, Istanbul-Turkey, IT Director
Saul Landau, journalist, USA
Roland Marounek, programmer, Stop.USA, Brussels

I Sign the Petition!

Send a mail to Info@Brusselstribunal.org
with "I sign" mentionning your name, profession, country,
and organisation if applicable.

http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/897258.htm

MARC PARENT

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
- H.L. Mencken

CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/

Forwarded from Postcolonial List

2003-05-03T10:00:00.000+02:00

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 / MAY / 2003

Dear Salwa,

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my posting. As for your wonderings I’m afraid I’ve got no women issue and no Iraqi women issue specialist answers whatsoever. Few (5) schematic answers are all I have:

§1 Iraqi secular political forces, including feminists, should be entitled to special--50% seats quota--representation in parliament.

I think Iraqi general and feminist secular forces should first of all drop their own sectarianism and any totalitarian claim to a 100% secular Iraq, if they are to win any confidence on the part of their adversaries. I saw the appeal signed by Nadia Mahmoud and her friends on the iac-discussion list: “We are proposing the complete separation of Government and religion in Iraq, to establish the only possible chance of secular rule, which is inclusive of all Iraqis, regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, and political opinion. We are working together to make sure that the new constitution will exclude all the existent codes and laws which are based on Shariah law and which discriminate against women.” I must say that while I appreciate the signers’ anti-war engagement I rather agree with answers given to them in Hassan Zeini’s posting: “How can you demand democracy, yet want to dictate to the majority what kind of constitution they should have?? How can the majority of Iraqis, who are basically religious, be told to give up laws based on their religion, Islam, and change them into secular laws?” I respect Nadia Mahmoud’s belief in “Universal Women’s Rights”. I respect too Shii Iraqi women’s religious belief. In my view both sort of belief are equally metaphysical and controversial, whereas the only more or less universally accepted rights I know are the rights of peoples.

To counter religious zeal and restrain or contain sectarian passion, Iraqi general and feminist secular forces should oppose Shii and more general leanings towards majority/minority decision thinking and towards political centralization or purely territorial federation. (New adjustments in what is called the Iraq Shia Declaration indicate that Kenaan Makiya, the Iraqi who promised the “flowers and candies”, may have already and again succeeded in selling his federal project, to Shii Iraqis this time. His article, in “al-Hayat” January 14 2003, about the after-Saddam Iraqi federation parted the country on territorial regional basis, instead of communal ethnic basis as in non-Western models, or communal confessional and sectarian basis as in Middle East originating models. His idea of a territorial federalism is American and German inspired, and was consequently easily adopted by the American administration.)

To avert major civil war danger and to turn destructive enmity into constructive competition and cultural agonism in the service of the people of Iraq, these forces should fight for the right to special--50% seats quota--representation in parliament. My proposal is an Iraqi version of the Lebanese Christian/Muslim quota solution. The proposal is not about political tactics nor is it about some theory of pragmatic compromise. Rather, I consider the equal representation for secular and non-secular “confessions” to be a well poised and a strategic moral choice.

§2 As belief communities, Iraqi secular communities, including possible feminist communities, should be entitled to self-government and maximal protection from hostile environment.

To increase confessional peace, to contain sectarian instability, and to enjoy self-government rights for their respective communities, Iraqi general and feminist secular forces should be entitled to an equal senatorial representation for secular (50% seats) and non-secular (50% seats) communities in a confessional (milali) federal system.

Iraqis should be free to believe and practice secularism and feminism, they shouldn’t however seek to impose it on members of non-secular, non-feminist, and non-secular feminist communities. They should also respect internal arrangements of what political philosopher John Rawls called “decent hierarchical societies”. I consider Rawls’s controversial view of liberal tolerance and his tolerant view of non-liberal societies, as with his model of “Islamic decent consultation hierarchies”, particularly enlightening and radically renewing as to a more generous way of dealing with rights and duties in communities such as those of Iraq.

§3 Male and female members of any Iraqi community, including non-secular and non-feminist communities, should be entitled to federal interference on their behalf to secure for them a decent minimum of communitarian-democratic citizen rights.

Me too I “wish to make it clear” that those civil and political rights of Iraqi citizens (men and women) I have in mind are neither universal human nor the usual liberal citizen rights. These are definitely not what Nadia Mahmoud and Co. believe in: “the rights of each and every individual to practice their freedoms in all spheres as they choose.” As in Rawls’s “human rights” conception, these rights do not require acceptance of the liberal idea that persons are citizens first and have equal basic rights as equal citizens. They are the citizens rights agreed upon by the federation of Iraqi communities--Rawls includes here rights to life liberty and justice, while subordinating communal democracy to federal democracy and equality within communities to that between communities (I would like to see included also the right to cultural authenticity and rootedness, and the right to resisting individualistic essentialism, communal nihilism, homogenizing globalization and cultural hybridity). These are communitarian rights in an Iraqi consociational setting, where persons are seen first as members of groups or more precisely as responsible and cooperating members of their respective groups (“As such members, persons have rights and liberties enabling them to meet their duties and obligations and to engage in a decent system of social cooperation”, Rawls).

Iraqi citizen rights as understood here are a class of rights that play a special role in a law of Iraqi communities. Adapting Rawls’s Law of Peoples to present purpose we may say that: (a) the fulfilment of Iraqi citizen rights is a necessary condition of the decency of the Iraqi communities internal political and social institutions and the specifying limit to their internal autonomy; (b) their fulfilment is sufficient to exclude justified and forceful interference by other communities; (c) they set a limit to the pluralism among Iraqi communities. As Iraqi citizens, general and feminist secular forces may thus influence outcomes in general issues and women related issues in particular, as when it comes to protecting feminist communities from hostile environment or intervening on the behalf of female members in the other communities.

§4 As belief communities, Iraqi secular communities, including possible feminist communities, should be entitled to self-overcoming, to fair cultural and political competition, and if justified to public reward and authority position.

In my view, Iraqi communities should be free not only to believe in and practice secularism and feminism, they should be even rewarded for arguing in public federal tournaments and for “proselytizing” in nationally sanctioned forms. Averting civil war, responding to religious and secular fundamentalist beliefs, and domesticating sectarian messianic energies, require channelling destructive power politics towards constructive cultural agonism; towards group individuation and competition in the service of Iraqi people. It requires promotion of the Arab-Islamic culture of al-ta’âkuz and revival of ‘Ukâz ancient tradition. Indeed, we shouldn’t fear sectarian diversity and sectarian agonism, we should be afraid only from sectarian egoism segregation and oppression. Political scientist Chantal Mouffe puts it this way:

So, by equal representation self-government and self-overcoming for the main confessions (possibly ethnic groups) I mean actually the institutionalization of the agonal struggle between the leading communities of Iraq. By positioning the most redoubtable adversaries in the country, this sort of arrangements could lift up the bravest and noblest characters in Iraqi intellectual and cultural arena.

§5 Male and female members of any Iraqi community, including non-secular and non-feminist communities, should be entitled to federal interference on their behalf to secure for them maximal agonistic-democratic citizen rights.

Promoting healthy democratic agonism between the Iraqi communities while fostering patriotic loyalty of all to the national arena requires allowing for agonism also within communities. It requires amending the minimal communitarian-democratic list of citizen rights by agonistic-democratic ones (it requires us to both retrieve Rawls’s proposed law of peoples and revise his rationality and consensus discourse). Indeed, in a way comparable to the part individual rights play in liberal consociations such as Switzerland, common citizenship opens up here, in what we may call post-liberal consociations, the possibility of state interfering in group practices for the sake of citizens’ individuation rights and for the sake of their agonistic duties (political philosopher Michael Walzer has a lot to say about consociations).

Thus, I think male and female members of any Iraqi community, including non-secular and non-feminist communities, should be entitled to federal interference on their behalf to secure for them rights to and duties of (a) active citizenship, in the sense of both national patriotic responsibility and communal specific self-overcoming; (b) contestation of monopoly and dissent from ‘herd’ restrictions in cultural interpretation and communal meaning; (c) passionate public discourse, religious and irreligious; (d) moral integrity and fair competition on cultural interpretation and communal meaning.

***

Dear Salwa, communitarian-agonistic rights and duties apply equally to male and female members. Nietzsche would say “Yes, I wish that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate together.” So, may the relationship of men and women be, as he wished, one of “reverence before one another”!

Best regards,

Mohammed

--- from list postcolonial@lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Forwarded from Postcolonial List

2003-05-02T22:00:00.000+02:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAY / 2003

Dear Mohammad,

Thanks for sharing these thoughts. The position of Iraqi women in any
future political configuration is of concern to me. I'm wondering how
you would respond to someone like Nadia Mahmoud who has spoken very
eloquently about what a theocratic or semi or pseudo-theocratic regime
might have in store for women.

I have heard a Shiite cleric in Basra state that high on his agenda is
the dismantling of the Iraqi Women's Council, a "prostitution ring," as
he called it. Unfortunately, I can't recall his name. What do you say
to all those women who now live in fear of seeing the few rights they
managed to secure under Saddam curtailed or done away with? Unlike
what the Al-Jazeerah presenter of "Lil Nisa' Faqat (For Women Only)
thinks, I believe it would be a crying shame to have Iraq ruled by
Iranian-style mullahs after everything the Iraqis had gone through over
the past three decades. I find it ironic that the same American
administration that ostensibly "put Afghani women high on its agenda,"
and was keen on seeing Afghani women freed of their burqas, something
which has yet to happen, may now be the agent by means of which
mandatory veiling might return to Iraq. I fear that the discourses in
currency today are only the tip of the iceberg for women.

Salwa Ghaly

--- from list postcolonial@lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Forwarded from IAC-discussion List

2003-05-02T10:00:00.000+02:00

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAY / 2003

Dear Tahir Zaman,

Of course to be democratic is not necessarily to be secular. Secularism is even perfectly reconcilable with dictatorship. Saddam's regime was one example, the soon to be imposed Bushite-liberal regime is another example--Turkey is the history of another secular dictatorship, examples are many. Remember, very influential people are now advising the American Administration to install liberal secular institutions in Iraq and not bother about democratic institutions (compare with securing the oil while leaving the museums to the looters). Take Greek tradition of democratic thinking, this is much older than contemporary secular thinking. Secularism is a purely modern, Western, liberal and deeply Christian thought. Sadly enough, while most creative and serious Western political thinkers abandon it, secularism is being fetishized in the Arab world.

Remember, there were no flowers and candies to welcome the Americans, as promised by Kenaan Makiya and his likes. “Surprising” the invader, Iraqis’ message was that democracy to them meant Iraq’s sovereignty and SELF-determination for its people, that they alone were to determine which regime the country should have. Iraqis are “surprising” the occupiers still, showing them their readiness to fight against liberal dictatorships as well, showing them their determination to fight for a non-secular post-liberal democracy--socialist, Islamic, communitarian--of some sort.

True, some people are minimizing what I called the “new deal in Iraq,” keeping their eyes shut or burying their heads in the sand (The Guardian writing about 2,000 supporters in Basra last Saturday, while many others, like Reuters, are reporting figures up to 100.000). True, some fear the current situation of rising Muslim protest and Shiite power demonstrations, would only increase the hopes of patriotic Iraqis not their worries. Indeed, the current movement could be announcing a period of mounting religious sectarianisms for example. But, what’s being downplayed is that it could be also announcing a threatening phase of secular counter-sectarianism. Worse even, it could fool superficial secular patriotic democrats into siding with secular unpatriotic liberals; it could fool them into siding with the occupation forces and those who decided beforehand that a non-secular Iraqi state "isn't going to happen."

As for the first worries, it’s not obvious at all whether the Shiite hierarchy wants to impose an Iranian-style Islamic state on Iraq’s mixed population. Spokesmen for al-Hawza and statements of al-Hakim said they wanted not an Islamic state but a "government of all Iraqis", including non-Arab Kurds and Christians. Yet, even as these Shiite leaders demand the departure of U.S. forces and stress an Islamic revival, they also emphasize the need for democratic values. Compared to Iran, I believe Iraqi Shia have opted for a more popular and less theocratic democracy conception. They also want a freely elected government, but that is in large part because they know that, in a free and fair election, they would be well positioned to govern. I think the issue of government in a consociational society like Iraq shouldn’t be at all a matter of settlement in terms of majorities and minorities. There should be some more just arrangement that looks after the interests of all involved communities, ethnic and confessional, non-secular and secular alike.

I believe Iraqi Shia have also opted for a more decentralized rule, though not enough as to espouse some form of federation, not even a “confessional” non-Western style federation. That is where their sectarianism is mainly hiding. Many of them urge unity among Shiites and Sunnis, and call for the protection of minority rights, including those of the Kurds. I think they should be a lot more precise about group rights; about self-government rights at local community level and special representation rights in central national institutions, if they are to truly increase their credibility among all Iraqis. They should if they want to avert even more dangerous sectarianism, secular “confessionalism,” and secular fundamentalism, striking back at them.

However, a rather moderate and more optimistic picture of further developments is provided by the gathering of Islamic organizations, including the Shiite prestigious al-Dawa party and a [Sunni] Iraqi Islamic Party with other--communist (the Iraqi Communist Party), socialist, nationalist, and democratic--organizations within the same front organization: the Iraqi Patriotic Forces Coalition. This sort of political collaboration could tempt larger Shiite constituencies if only the secular taboo were finally heaved. I believe the Iraqi democrats should, at least partly, drop the secular dogma if they are to win the patriotic battle against sectarianism.

Dear Tahir, of course raising the flag of a secular Iraqi rule is not so wise. It is as foolish and sectarian, if not more, as raising the flag of a Shiite theocratic rule in Iraq. It is raising the flag of civil war and playing into the hands of the Anglo-American occupier. Remember the Algerian tragedy is the clash of two fundamentalist beliefs, the secular and the Islamic. An Iraqi civil war will be also the clash of two sectarianisms, the secular and the religious. Yet, the issue is not one of either secularism or theocracy. There are more options, many forms of political organization allowing for both "confessions" to exist side by side. There are forms of governments (call them post-liberal regimes) where all belief communities--secular atheists, secular theists, non-secular theists, and non-secular atheists--can live side by side. Nor is the issue one of denying the Arab-Islamic cultural identity of Iraq, that business is one of the Anglo-American puppets, the Makiya the Chalabi and their likes. To the contrary, the political and cultural history of our region have shown other and richer modes of social organization than the now Western dominating one.

Greetings,

Mohammed

Iraq Action Coalition Discussion Forum

http://iraqaction.org/discussion.html

Forwarded from IAC-discussion List

2003-05-01T10:00:00.000+02:00

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MAY / 2003

Three questions:

With all the conflict that is going on in the world and the refusal of a growing list of peoples to be part of secular states eg: Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Aceh, Algeria, Afghanistan and now seemingly Iraq. Is it wise to be raising the flag of secularism?

Is it the understanding of many on this list that there are no rights to be had for women in an Islamic State?

Does this mean to be democratic one has to be secular?

Many thanks

Tahir Zaman

Iraq Action Coalition Discussion Forum

http://iraqaction.org/discussion.html