Provincial Elections, Basing Agreements And A Pony

By Cernig

When the Bush administration said - before, during and after the Surge - that military tactical victories would mean nothing if they weren't followed up by political victories, they were right. So how's that working out for them?

Well, for a start the provincial elections due for October have been postponed, de facto, until at least after the US elections in November and perhaps even further.

Kurdish lawmakers in the Iraqi Parliament said Thursday the provincial elections scheduled for October should be delayed.

"According to the Iraqi Constitution, any federal region can have its own law, and this includes Kurdistan region; thus, it is possible not to hold provincial council elections in the region" in October, said Sadi al-Barzinji, an Iraqi lawmaker and member of the Kurdish Alliance.

...Kurdish officials also said they would seek to postpone the provincial elections until all elements of Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution are implemented.

Article 140 seeks to reverse the "Arabization" of Kirkuk that occurred when Saddam Hussein tried to influence demographics in the city.

"The Kurdistan Coalition List has a unified attitude in demanding the postponement of the provincial elections in Kirkuk until Article 140 is implemented," said Osman. "The longer this article is delayed, the more voices will stand against it."

However, delays in holding provincial elections - possibly forever - may well be a feature rather than a bug for Maliki and his backers. As our colleague Eric Martin points out in a great guest-post for Kevin Drum today, there's little chance of their keeping their grip on Shiite votes if Sadrists are allowed to contest the elections on anything like an equal footing. Likewise, they don't really wish to hand political power to Sunnis, especially those who feel they'd be represented better by the insurgents-for-hire in the Awakenings than by the current crop of former exiles doing the job.

A lawmaker with the Sunni political bloc Iraqi Accordance Front said Thursday the dispute over its return to the government does not concern Cabinet seats.

The IAF, along with other groups including the Sadrist Movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, left the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in August over a series of political disputes.

Taha al-Lahiebi with the Sunni bloc said the Maliki government was holding up the process of selecting a new Cabinet because of the July 1 parliamentary recess, Voices of Iraq said.

"The government is trying to delay the acceptance of the candidates in order to stall the approval of the new ministers to the parliament because the recess will begin soon," he said in a phone interview.

Delays in holding those elections provide a window of opportunity for incumbents to weaken their more popular rivals. Maliki's recent offensive in Mosul did more to round up local political hardliners who might oppose the current Sunni leadership than it did to smash Al Qaeda, just as the offensives in Basrah and Sadr City were aimed more at degrading and splintering Sadrist political networks than "criminal militias". Indeed, signs are that, by setting more militant Mahdi Army groups against Muqtada's stated policy of peaceful protests and political action and thus partly fracturing the Sadrist movement, those offensives might have created more criminal gangs than they destroyed.

Meanwhile, ISCI's Badr Brigade allies are doing their best to stoke new intra-Shiite fighting and to break the fragile truce between Sadr and Maliki's forces.

An Iraqi military unit's defacement of a Moqtada Sadr poster in a town southeast of Baghdad threatens to ignite conflict between rival Shiite groups.

The event occurred Tuesday in the city of Aziziyah, located about 40 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Critics are calling the move a political message and a sign of the rising level of hostility between two rival Shiite groups in Iraq, the Sadrists loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reported Thursday.

...Eyewitness accounts of Tuesday's incident said the Iraqi military unit that carried out the defacement is from the town of Kut, roughly 50 miles east of Aziziyah, which is reportedly a Badr stronghold.

Aziziyah police chief Gen. Saleh Gharfor blamed the Iraqi unit for trying to stoke a conflict between the two groups.

"It was designed to instigate some sectarian problems among the Shiites here," he said.

Maliki has also apparently been using US forces as proxies to truce-break. The prospects for political reconcilliation are, roughly, slim to none.

Then there's the US/Iraqi status-of-forces agreement that is supposed to be completed by July 31 in order to replace the UN mandate when it expires on December 31. Many Sunni groups are, of course, opposed to any agreement, as is Muqtada al-Sadr. But it is significant that the latter has been echoing Grand Ayatollah Sistani's reported stance of peaceful, political opposition - calling for protests and a national referendum. Even worse, the head of Maliki's own Dawa Party has spoken out against any agreement, saying that "the security accord would be detrimental to the country and Iraq would become a US colony under the deal".

Now it appears that Maliki's ISCI allies have also withdrawn their previous support for the deal, probably under pressure from their Iranian sponsors.

One of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians has come out against many of the U.S. proposals for a long-term security agreement.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim says unspecified points would "violate Iraq's national sovereignty" and no agreement has been reached.

Al-Hakim leads the main Shiite political bloc in Iraq, the United Iraqi Alliance.

His comments Thursday follow a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for protests against the negotiations. Aides say Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also has reservations about the deal.

Again, it appears that the prospects for a negotiated new security and basing agreement before the US elections in November are slim to none. In fact, the agreement seems less likely to happen at all than provincial elections do.

All of which means that, by Inauguration Day, the next US president may have his hands entirely tied. Instead of 100 years of bases, or even a gradual withdrawal, Iraqis themselves may be demanding a hurried American exit so as to clear the field for a more violent decision as to who should ultimately run Iraq.

Update: Now, some Iraqi lawmakers want to postpone any security agreement until after the next US president takes office - or longer if provincial elections haven't occured by then.

One American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqis appeared to be unwilling to make any concessions before the Iraqi provincial elections later this year that would seem - to Iraqi voters - to be too accommodating to the occupying forces. "They are playing hardball right now," the American official said.

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said many Iraqi leaders were being kept in the dark about the security pact, which he thinks should not be finalized until after the U.S. presidential elections in November. He also suggested that negotiations should not resume until after the expiration at year end of the United Nations charter that provides the framework for the occupation. Otherwise, he said, Iraq's position is too weak to negotiate effectively.

"The negotiations now are not equal, and the results will be more for the benefit of America," Othman said. "To have a long term agreement with the Bush administration, which has five months to go, is wrong. The Iraqi government should wait for the new American administration and then have an agreement with it."

Even one of the prime minister's closest allies, Ali Adeeb, a senior member of Maliki's Dawa Party, expressed similar reservations.

"This agreement is between Iraq and the United States president, and the American policy is not clear," Adeeb said. "Therefore we can wait until the American elections to deal with a Democratic or Republican president."

So, January or even later for the security agreement, depending on whether provincial elections ever actually take place and how fast negotiations proceed if they ever actually begin. Especially if, as seems likely, a Democratic president involves Congress in ratifying any agreement. So what happens in the "lapse time" between the expiry of the UN Mandate on December 31 and the conclusion of a new agreement? Maliki's already on record, from last December, as saying he would never countenance another extension of the UN mandate - and without a mandate or agreement the US presence is clearly illegal.

Well, more of this for a start:

Tens of thousands of Shiites have taken to the streets in Baghdad and other cities to protest plans for a long-term security agreement with the United States.

The rallies after Friday prayer services are the first to follow a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal that could lead to a long-term American troop presence.

The outcry could sharply heighten tensions over the proposed pact. The deal is supposed to be finished by July to replace the current U.N. mandate overseeing U.S.-led troops in Iraq.

Demonstrators in Baghdad's Sadr City district chanted "no to America, no to the occupation." A statement from al-Sadr's office has called the negotiations "a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people."