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U.S. Sends Wrong Message to the World

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Original article can be found here.

Restrictive regimes around the world came out ahead when the U.S. Supreme Court announced this week that it would not hear an appeal by two journalists in a case involving the leak of a CIA officer’s name. The reporters, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times, face up to 18 months in jail for not revealing their confidential sources.

President George W. Bush has stressed the need for greater press freedom in Russia, the Middle East and Asia, but the message from U.S. prosecutors and courts is being heard more clearly in repressive corners of the world. Many of the world’s despots have been using the case to their advantage.

Late last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists protested Cameroon’s imprisonment of Eric Wirkwa Tayu, publisher of a small private newspaper, Nso Voice, on charges that he defamed a local mayor. The government justified the detention in part by saying: “You are aware courts have decided in a number of countries that protection of free speech does not grant journalists, for instance, the privilege to refuse to divulge names of sources in all circumstances.”

Similarly, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela recently complained when international observers criticized his country’s new media law, which severely restricts broadcast news coverage. They should complain instead, Chávez said, about “U.S. journalists that are being prosecuted by the government in Washington for not revealing their sources.”

The U.S. case has followed a winding path. The syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing two unnamed “senior administration officials,” first revealed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity in July 2003. Cooper wrote about the disclosure later; Miller conducted interviews but never wrote a story. A special prosecutor was appointed to determine whether government officials committed a crime by willfully disclosing the agent’s identity. No government official has been charged after two years of investigation, most of which has focused on compelling reporters to identify confidential sources. By refusing to hear the journalists’ appeal, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s contempt ruling against Miller and Cooper.

In repressive countries, journalists are routinely compelled to reveal their sources. Last week alone, CPJ found that three governments on three continents had harassed or jailed journalists while pressuring them to reveal sources.

In Nepal, the police demanded that Kishor Karki, editor of the daily Blast Time, reveal his sources for a report on clashes between the government and Maoist rebels. In a separate incident, two military officers insisted that the editor of Jana Aastha, Kishor Shrestha, and other journalists from the weekly reveal sources for an article about an army general. These journalists refused to reveal their sources, but officers promised they’d be back. In Nepal that threat is not empty.

In Serbia and Montenegro, two police officers visited the independent daily Danas, demanding that the editor, Grujica Spasovic, and director, Radivoj Cveticanin, reveal their sources for a report identifying where indicted war criminal Ratko Maldic may be hiding.

And in Burundi, authorities released journalist Etienne Ndikuriyo after jailing him for more than a week for a story questioning President Domitien Ndayizeye’s health. He said that prison interrogators demanded that he reveal his sources, but that he refused. Ndikuriyo faces criminal charges of “violating the honor” of the president.

The American case is troubling because it follows several others in which U.S. prosecutors and judges demanded that journalists disclose sources. A television reporter served four months of home confinement for refusing to reveal a source; prosecutors are seeking records from two New York Times reporters; several other reporters face contempt charges in a lawsuit involving a former U.S. government scientist.

Because the United States has set a high standard for press freedom, any perceived weakening in U.S. protections provides cover for authoritarian regimes to justify crackdowns. CPJ documented a spike in the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when restrictive governments appropriated the Bush’s war rhetoric to clamp down on dissent.

They may have a similar opportunity today.

(Frank Smyth is the Washington representative and journalist security coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

U.S. Arms for Terrorists?

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Original story found here.

The Colombian police heard in early May that a big deal was going down inside a gated luxury community southwest of Bogotá. On May 3 they followed Colombian suspects, two of whom turned out to be retired Colombian Army officers, to a house filled with twenty-nine metal crates of arms and 32,000 rounds of ammunition. The police were still taking inventory of the cache when two more suspects knocked on the door. The police arrested them, only to learn they were US soldiers. The Colombian police said the arms were bound for an illegal paramilitary group that the State Department considers to be both a drug-trafficking and a terrorist organization.

The community of Carmen de Apicalá, where the arms were found, is only a short drive from Colombia’s Tolemaida military base, home to US Black Hawk helicopters and the place where US Special Forces train Colombian troops in combat skills. For convenience as well as security, many US military personnel and contractors rent condominiums in Carmen de Apicalá. “It’s a lot of ammunition, and it’s a very suspicious case,” Colombia’s police commander, Gen. Jorge Castro, told local radio. Colombian lawmakers in Bogotá said the US Ambassador, William Wood, should explain the circumstances to the Colombian Congress.

The State Department spokesman in Washington, Richard Boucher, denied that the arms were part of a secret US effort to arm Colombian paramilitaries. But he still refuses to say whether the arms are part of the unprecedented $3.3 billion in military aid the United States began sending in 2000 as part of Plan Colombia. The Colombian attorney general’s office, which is now investigating the case, said that the arms had been diverted from US stockpiles. The Colombian television station RCN broadcast footage of arms with US markings.

The case comes at a time when the Colombian government, led by President Álvaro Uribe, is negotiating a broad amnesty for Colombian paramilitaries. Known by their supporters as “self-defense” groups, Colombian paramilitaries have long been responsible for most of the country’s politically motivated massacres and murders, which often target peasants, trade unionists and students they suspect of supporting leftist guerrillas. The rightist paramilitaries have also long been accused of secretly collaborating with the military to carry out death squad crimes.

“I think that it’s probably fair to say that there is [sic] some episodes of contact between Colombian military and these so-called self-defense forces,” Roger Noriega, the senior State Department official for Latin America, told Congress during questioning eight days after the Bogotá arrests, adding that such “episodes” are against Colombian law and US policy. Yet, in nearly every region of the country, Colombian military officers of all ranks have been found to be secretly collaborating with rightist paramilitaries, and only a few have ever been seriously prosecuted.

The United States itself has long been ambivalent about Colombia’s paramilitaries. Back in the 1960s the US military, according to its own documents, encouraged the Colombian military to organize rightist paramilitary forces to help fight leftist guerrillas. By the early 1980s, Colombian drug traffickers and large landowners together organized the paramilitaries into a national force to ward off kidnappings and other forms of extortion by leftist guerrillas. But by the end of the decade, the government had outlawed paramilitaries after one group trained by the late drug lord Pablo Escobar blew up a Colombian airliner.

The Colombian military soon found a new way to maintain contacts with illegal paramilitaries, however. In the fall of 1990, according to a letter from the Pentagon to Senator Patrick Leahy, the US military helped its Colombian counterpart make its intelligence networks “more efficient and effective.” It was instructed, according to an April 1991 classified Colombian military order, to keep its operations “covert” and “compartmentalized,” to use only “retired or active-duty Officers or Non-commissioned Officers” as liaisons, and not to put orders “in writing.”

One new intelligence network killed at least fifty-seven people, including trade unionists, community leaders and a journalist, according to judicial testimony. But charges were dropped after most of the witnesses were either murdered or disappeared. In 2001 a former Colombian Army general, Rito Alejo del Rio, was arrested by Colombian authorities from the attorney general’s office on charges that he allegedly collaborated with illegal paramilitaries. But these charges, too, were soon dismissed, and the country’s top two civilian prosecutors fled the country.

Later that year (one day before 9/11, ironically), the US State Department finally put Colombia’s largest paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, on its list of terrorist organizations. In 2002 US authorities announced that the AUC was implicated in trading drugs for arms with none other than Al Qaeda. US authorities finally began indicting more Colombian rightist paramilitary leaders on drug charges, after having already indicted Colombian leftist guerrilla leaders on drug charges.

The May arrests of two US military officers for allegedly running arms to AUC paramilitaries raises many questions. US warrant officer Allan Tanquary and Sgt. Jesus Hernandez are now back in the United States, where officials say they may face criminal charges. “We’re committed,” said spokesman Boucher, “to a full investigation.”

After Iraq’s Wartime Elections

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Original story found here.

Robert Fisk is the award-winning journalist of the London-based Independent newspaper, and he has long been a consistent critic of American imperial policies in the Middle East. “But it was the sight of those thousands of Shi’ites, the women mostly in black hejab covering, the men in leather jackets or long robes, the children toddling beside them, that took the breath away,” he reported from Baghdad on election day. “If Osama bin Laden had called these elections an apostasy, these people, who represent 60{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} of Iraq, did not heed his threats.”

The failure of the U.S.-backed election in Iraq is not that it was illegitimate for most Iraqis but that the exercise has only deepened Iraq’s sectarian divisions and perhaps moved the country closer toward the specter of a full-scale civil war. Progressives should remain critical of the January 30 election but not for the reasons that most have articulated so far. Many anti-war critics were so busy pooh-poohing the balloting as a farce engineered by the Bush administration that they forgot that Washington had only agreed to the election under Iraqi Shi’ite pressure. The first U.S. plan for Iraq was to hold indirect elections through regional caucuses, a process that would have lent itself far more easily to American manipulation. But Iraq’s Shi’ite grand ayatollah, Ali Sistani, and other Iraqis said no.

Actually, the election results are not likely to enhance American influence over Iraq. According to the reliable Arab-run polling firm, Zogby International, more than two-thirds of Iraq’s Shi’ites want U.S. forces out of Iraq either immediately or once the elected government is in place. That goal may be unrealistic, since any sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces could well plunge Iraq into civil war, but it underscores that the election was a step forward for Iraqi sovereignty, despite the conditions of U.S. military occupation in which it took place. U.S. progressives could help Iraqis reach their goal by ensuring that a transfer of power actually occurs.

Only last month, David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, complained that by going ahead with the election the Bush administration would “help install an Iraqi government whose key leaders were trained in Iran.” He went on to say “in terms of strategy,” the Bush administration “is a riderless horse.” In other words, the administration’s original plan to install the Iraqi exile, Ahmad Chalabi, as a proxy to control both the Iraqi people and their oil has failed, and now the administration is finding its own rhetoric catching up with itself in last Sunday’s election in the form of an expected Shi’ite victory.

Many if not most progressives, however, have downplayed Iraq’s sectarian divisions, since to acknowledge them might lead one to admit that the anti-American insurgents are drawn mainly from the nation’s long-privileged Sunni Arab minority constituting less than 20{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} of the Iraqi population. (The 2001 U.S. State Department Human Rights report on Iraq, released in 2002, reported that Sunni Arabs represented 13-16{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} of the Iraqi population.) During Saddam Hussein’s regime, Sunni Arabs dominated not only the ruling Ba’ath Party but also the Iraqi military’s officer corps and elite troops.

Strange Bedfellows

Ironically, anti-war activists who discount the divisions in Iraq find themselves bedfellows with senior Bush administration officials like Steve Hadley, the new White House national security adviser. In a Washington Post op-ed article one day before the Iraqi election, Hadley, too, pooh-poohed the notion that Iraq’s sectarian splits really matter. Unlike Hadley, U.S. progressives feel that the nonparticipation of Sunni voters casts a pall on the election. But what most progressives are still reluctant to concede is that for most Shi’ites and for nearly all Kurds, who together amount to at least 80{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} of the population, the election did matter.

Of course, Iraq’s sectarian tensions should not be overblown, and they have far more to do with political power than with either religion or ethnicity. In Baghdad, Sunnis and Shi’ites have often intermarried and lived side by side in peace. But it is undeniable that for decades both Shi’ites and Kurds, albeit in different regions, collectively fought against and were persecuted by Saddam’s Ba’athist government. As the respected Middle East expert Juan Cole, a major critic of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, wrote in his most recent book:

“Probably a majority of Shi’ites joined the ranks of the opposition in the fateful spring of 1991 when, in the wake of the defeat inflicted on the regime by the U.S. and its allies, Shi’ites in Najaf, Karbala, Basra and elsewhere rose up against the Ba’ath. The regime’s retaliation was brutal and effective, leaving countless casualties (rumors of 40,000 dead in Karbala alone have reached me from Iraqi expatriates). More recently, the Iraqi government has waged ecological war on the marsh Shi’ites of the south, draining their swamps and forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to Iran.”

Many American progressives have never acknowledged the tragedy of the failed spring uprisings in 1991, what countless Iraqis at the time called their anti-Saddam intifada. During and after the 1991 Gulf War, then-President George H.W. Bush repeatedly urged Iraqis to oust Saddam and “toss him aside.” Within weeks, a full-scale insurgency was under way both south and north of Baghdad. “Saddam Hussein faces his most serious political challenge in more than 20 years in power,” wrote the CIA in a secret report in the middle of the month-long uprisings. “Time is not on his side.”

Anti-Saddam rebels­ dominated by both Shi’ites and Kurds­fought for weeks after the 1991 Gulf War in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, but Saddam’s remaining helicopter gunships, tanks, and elite forces eventually wiped them out. Why did the Bush I administration abandon the rebellion that it helped to inspire? In their joint memoir, George H.W. Bush and his then-national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, wrote: “We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf” and the possibility of “[b]reaking up the Iraqi state.”

According to this logic, the January 30 election represents a triumph not for the United States but for Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, which is now moving toward the kind of self-empowerment and self-determination that it has long deserved. Progressives familiar with Iraqi history can understand why neither Shi’ites nor Kurds have much love for Sunni Arab Ba’athists, thousands of whom are currently anti-American insurgents. But some anti-war figures, like novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, have not only minimized the roots of today’s indigenous Iraqi insurgency but have unabashedly apologized for the indiscriminate use of violence against Iraqi civilians. “[I]f we were to only support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity,” said Roy in a speech in San Francisco last summer.

Anti-war activists like Roy have long championed the poorest of Iraqis, whose children suffered the most in the 1990s under U.S.-backed, UN economic sanctions. But how many of these same anti-war activists have been willing to acknowledge that most of these Iraqis were Shi’as and that they suffered domestically under Saddam?

Other progressives have­ perhaps unwittingly­ become bedfellows with bigots who stereotype Shi’ite Muslims, unfairly painting Iraq’s Shi’ite Arab majority as an alleged tool of Shi’ite Persian clerics who dominate neighboring Iran. This may be a convenient cheap shot at the Bush administration, but it is based on ignorance. Scholars like Moojan Momen, author of the first major English-language text on Shi’ite Islam, Yitzhak Nakash, who wrote the first study of Iraqi Shi’ites, and Juan Cole have documented that Iraqi Shi’ites have their own particular history, long competing for influence with Iranian clerics. If anything, Iraq’s Shi’ites are likely to assert themselves even more if given the chance.

The one Iraqi Shi’ite group that has been lauded by some anti-war columnists is the al-Mahdi militia led by the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. His father­, a widely revered cleric­, and two brothers were all murdered by Saddam, whose administration tortured and killed hundreds of Shi’ite clerics. The young al-Sadr later ordered his followers to rise up against U.S. troops after the chief U.S. occupying authority in Iraq, Paul Bremer, closed down his movement’s newspaper. The irony of progressives’ support for al-Sadr is that he is among the most socially reactionary of Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders (he has not earned the status of cleric) and has, in his opportunistic search for allies, reached out to the misogynist, anti-democratic mullahs who run Iran. The most respected Iraqi Shi’ite cleric, Ali Sistani, is Iranian-born, but he has consistently sought to keep theology and politics at least somewhat separate in a “quietist” tradition based on ancient Shi’ite scriptures, unlike the modern ruling Shi’ite theocracy in Iran.

Iraq is still a bloody mess, and the choice now for both Iraq’s elected government and the United States is whether to pursue a military victory over the insurgents or to reach out to them and to Iraq’s Sunni Arab community to negotiate a settlement of the ongoing conflict. U.S. progressives should support attempts at reconciliation in order to minimize further bloodshed.

The El Salvador Parallel

The wartime experience in El Salvador is instructive, although not in the ways that senior Bush administration officials like Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld contend. Both men claim that U.S.-backed elections in El Salvador helped defeat the rebel insurgency. What they forget is that El Salvador’s civil war went on for 10 years after the country’s first election, and that what ended the war was not an election but the joint decision by the Bush I administration and El Salvador’s second elected government to finally stop trying to eliminate the rebels and instead pursue a negotiated settlement.

Nor is the Central America experience instructive in the way that some anonymous Pentagon officials have recently suggested, when they leaked to Newsweek the idea that at least some U.S. military planners in Iraq now want to promote Iraqi death squads based on their experience in the 1980s in El Salvador. (Anyone wishing to thoroughly explore this story should see David Holiday’s Central America blog) The use of such dirty tactics in Iraq would be one sure way to turn the current level of sectarian violence into a bloodbath with U.S. troops stuck in the middle, perhaps fighting both sides.

What progressives forget when comparing El Salvador and Iraq is that El Salvador’s insurgents were nearly all Marxists of one stripe or another. In contrast, Iraq’s anti-American insurgents are nearly all right-wingers of one stripe or another­either Sunni Arab nationalists or Islamic Wahaabi fundamentalists­and despise most Iraqi leftists, including the Iraqi Communist Party. U.S. Labor Against the War and the Iraqi Communist Party have recently denounced the murder of a leader of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, Hadi Salih, by what both groups suggested were Ba’athist insurgents. The Iraqi Communist Party participated in the January 30 election, faring better than many Western progressives and Bush administration officials expected. Kurdish candidates also fared well, given their small numbers, and Shi’ite candidates led the pack.

It is time for Westerners of all political persuasions to finally start seeing Iraq’s richly diverse people for who they are instead of kicking them like footballs to try to advance a political agenda.

Next test: insurgents

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Original story found here.

The Bush administration looks like it has finally scored a ringing success in Iraq.

But, if one objective of Sunday’s elections was to help defeat Iraq’s ongoing insurgencies, then the exercise failed.

The question now is how Iraq’s next government will handle the insurgents. Before Sunday, they threatened voters. But U.S. troops led the effort to secure polling stations, while more than half of Iraq’s eligible voters defied insurgent threats and exercised their first real chance for self-empowerment in history.

No one should doubt the sincerity of that step–least of all President George W. Bush and his senior advisers. For, as much as Iraq’s elections stand as a triumph, they also mark the failure of the administration’s original plan for governing the nation. Instead of helping to install pliable Iraqis ready to follow Washington’s lead, Iraq’s next government will be dominated by Shia Arabs, more than two-thirds of whom, according to a recent poll by the reliable Zogby International, want U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as the new government is in place.

Iraq’s next leaders, however, may want us to stay a little longer, as any abrupt U.S. withdrawal could plunge the nation into a civil war. And, if the way Iraqis voted on Sunday is any indication, such a conflict is already under way. The day before Iraq’s elections, the new White House national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, claimed in a Washington Post op-ed that Iraq’s sectarian splits were being overblown. Yet the turnout was undeniably high in Shia as well as Kurdish areas, while in the Sunni Arab heartland relatively fewer Iraqis chose to vote.

Rather than unite Iraq, the U.S.-backed elections have only sharpened the struggle for political power among the nation’s different population groups. The challenge for both the next Iraqi government and the Bush administration is to find a way to reach out to Iraq’s newly disenfranchised Sunni Arab minority. Not only are areas like the Sunni Triangle the same places where few Iraqis voted, but these same areas remain the main base of Iraq’s ongoing insurgencies.

The Bush administration launched a major military offensive in cities like Fallujah before the elections. Yet, even though U.S. operations killed or drove out many insurgents, they still failed to secure these areas in a way that compelled Sunnis to vote. Some commentators have already asked whether the next government will be able to find and train Iraqi troops to take over more of the fighting from U.S. forces. But these new Iraqi troops may well be drawn from Iranian-trained Shia militias, and their deployment would only further split Iraq’s sectarian sides.

One alternative now would be to try to negotiate with Iraq’s Sunni insurgents instead of trying to eliminate them militarily. Fortunately, the United States already has a precedent for such an approach, even if Bush administration officials still fail to see it.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have each pointed to El Salvador’s war-time elections 20 years ago as a supposed model for Iraq. But they forget that El Salvador’s war dragged on for another 10 years after that nation’s first election, and its war ended not through elections at all but only after El Salvador’s U.S.-backed government finally decided to negotiate with El Salvador’s insurgents.

Negotiating with Iraqi insurgents would be even harder. While many if not most Sunni Arabs may well desire peace, foreign insurgents tied to al-Qaida would surely continue using terror to try to derail any possible settlement. Sadly, the war in Iraq may also already be dangerously close to the point at which even a new strategy would not be enough to prevent the nation’s slide into even thicker sectarian bloodshed. If so, U.S. troops would end up stuck in the middle, while fighting at least one side.

It’s hoped senior Bush administration advisers have finally learned something, at least since Sunday. Sectarian divisions do matter in a country where one small group has oppressed others for not only decades but centuries. The new Iraq promises to be more representative, indeed, than any government in that region’s long history. But, instead of being the first step toward democracy, it could yet mark the start of a full-blown civil war.

Kven er dei progressive i Irak?

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(This is a translation into Norwegian of “Who Are the Progressives in Iraq? The Left, the Right and the Islamists,” originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus on September 21, 2004. It is posted on the Norwegian website, dilettant.)

Original story found here.

Ei hending i Irak denne månaden (september 2004, red.anm) vart ikkje nemnd i verken mainstream media eller i den alternative pressa, dette til trass for at hendinga gjev signal om at amerikansk kontroll over Irak si politiske framtid allereie er i ferd med å forsvinna. I august støtta det Kvite Hus etableringa av eit irakisk nasjonalråd med hundre medlemmer frå ulike klanar og ulike etniske- og religiøse grupper, for å avgjera oppbygginga av eit valovervakingsorgan. Denne månaden kom to store politiske parti ? begge sett på som tvilsame av Washington ? best ut i stemmegjevinga.

Mange kritiserer legitimiteten i prosessen Bush-administrasjon vonar å styra i retning nasjonale val i Irak i januar. Dei indirekte vala fann stad under krigstilhøve og AP rapporterer at det var eksplosjonar nær staden der delegatane var samla. Dei irakiske delegatane utvida også talet på viseformenn i nasjonalrådet frå to til fire. Hadde dei ikkje gjort det kunne resultatet har vore endå meir urovekkjande for det Kvite Hus.

Jawad al-Maliki frå Rådet for Islamsk Revolusjon i Irak (SCIRI) flest stemmer, 56 i talet, i avstemminga i september. Denne shiamuslimske gruppa vart kalla eit verktøy for Iran under den USA-leia invasjonen av Irak. Ein annan irakar som er endå mindre attraktiv i Washington sine auge, generalsekretæren i det Irakiske Kommunistpartiet (www.iraqcp.org), Hamid Majid Moussa kom på andre plass med 55 stemmer. Samstundes kom Rasim al-Awadi, delegaten frå den tidlegare CIA-støtta gruppa INA, på tredjeplass med 53 stemmer. På fjerdeplass kom Nasir A?if al-Ani, delegaten frå det Irakiske Islamske Parti, ei sunnigruppe som sympatiserer med den baathist-baserte, antiamerikanske motstanden vest og nord for Baghdad. Han fekk 48 stemmer.

Det lover ikkje vel for Bush-administrasjon å berre ha ein alliert blant fire i dette potensielt svært viktige valovervakingsorganet. Etter at nasjonalrådet var sett ned, men før stemmegjevinga, uttalte det Kvite Hus sin talsmann seg frå Bush sin familieranch i Crawford, Texas: – Valet på nasjonalråd er eit teikn på at det irakiske folket ikkje vil tillata terroristar å stå i vegen for landets demokratiske framtid.

Men kva om valet i Irak tidleg neste år gjev ei regjering ulikt noko Bush-administrasjonen nokon gong har sett føre seg? Den respektere arabisten Juan Cole ved Universitet i Michigan var blant dei fyrste som kommenterte valresultata i nasjonalrådet. Det gjorde han på si eiga nettside www.juancole.com. ? Så, sa han, – denne lista er nok eit bevis på at USA invaderte Irak for å hjelpa ein koalisjon av kommunistar, islamistar og tidlegare baathistiske nasjonalistar til makta. Dersom du hadde sagt noko slikt for tre år sidan ville du blitt ledd ut.

Min fiendes venar

Mange på den amerikanske venstresida ser ut til å vita lite om sine irakiske motpartar, og å skjøna rolla til den irakiske venstresida krev ei nyansert tilnærming. Diverre har den enkle anti-imperialistiske analysa til grupper som International A.N.S.W.E.R. vorte akseptert av fleire progressive organ. Artiklar i The Nation og kommentarar på det uavhengige radioprogrammet Democracy Now har så godt som oversett rolla irakiske progressive spelar. Samstundes har dei retta søkjelys mot, om ikkje forfekta, dei mange ulike irakisk-baserte gruppene som har gjort opprør mot den USA-leia okkupasjonen. Dette har vorte gjort utan at ein har teke seg bryet med å spørja kven desse gruppene er og kva dei tyder for irakarar.

Fleire ting ser no ut til å vera klart rundt Irak-krigen. Den USA-leia invasjonen var det mest uvørne og farlege steget USA har teke sidan krigen i Vietnam. Amerika betaler allereie dyrt og kjem til å betala endå dyrare i framtida for dette. Meir ein tusen amerikanske soldatar er drepne i løpet av vel eit år i ein kampanje som har undergravd amerikansk tryggleik meir enn sjølv presidentkandidat John Kerry klarer å formidla. Internasjonale meiningsmålingar viser at det aldri har vore meir motivlje, om ikkje direkte hat, mot USA rundt om i verda. Dette er akkurat kva al Qa?ida terroristar, ein reell trussel mot USA og andre, treng.

Amerikanske aktivistar som demonstrerte mot krigen i Irak har gjeve eit uvurderleg bidrag gjennom å fortelja resten av verda at millionar av amerikanarar var mot den USA-leia invasjonen. Men fiendens fiende er ikkje med naudsyn ein ven. Å tru det er å klamra seg til ein orwellsk logikk som får amerikanske motstandarar av krigen til å framstå som både uinformerte og som like kyniske som krigstilhengjarane dei kjempar mot. Det ironiske ved Irak-krigen er at Bush-administrasjonen einsidig valde å invadera eit land for å kasta ein leiar som var blant verdas mest forhatte despotar, men likevel klarde å venda hopetal av menneske verda rundt mot USA.

Kven hata Saddam?

Blant Saddam Hussein sine motstandarar har ein alltid funne ingen annan enn Osama bin Laden, som lenge omtalte Saddam Hussein som anten ?vantru? eller som ?ein falsk muslim? nesten kvar einaste gong han nemnde diktatoren i intervju eller fråsegner. Dei mest radikale blant muslimane veit altfor godt at ikkje ei einaste moderne arabisk regjering torturerte og drap så mange muslimar som Saddam sitt Ba?ath-regime. Det er heller ingen andre leiarar i Midtausten som har blodet til så mange kommunistar på hendene som Saddam hadde etter tiår med tortur og drap. Baath-partiet har vore både antikommunistisk og antiislamsk, med etnisk nasjonalisme som fanesak. I Irak var Baath-partiet under Saddam Hussein ei minoritetsregjering. Etnisk arabiske sunnimuslimar har lenge dominert partiet, sjølv om sunniarabarane i dag utgjer maks 17 prosent av det irakiske folket, berre litt fleire enn talet på kvite i Sør-Afrika. Etnisk arabisk shiamuslimar derimot, er nesten like talrike i Irak som svarte i Sør-! Afrika. Alle som er interessert i å styrka dei fattige burde vita at Irak sine shiamuslimske innbyggjarar lenge har vore dei mest ubetydelege i Irak og at det var desse som lei mest under dei USA-støtta FN-sanksjonane. Shiamuslimske menn var lite anna enn kanonføde for Saddam sine mange militære eventyr. Kurdarane, som utgjer 20 prosent av det irakiske folket, hadde til liks med shiamuslimane berre symbolsk innverknad under Saddam.

Motstanden mot Saddam sitt styre tok mange former frå 1979 til 2003, med shiamuslimske, kurdisk-nasjonalistiske og kommunistiske grupper. Kvar av desse mista titusenar av tilhengjarar i brutale aksjonar frå Ba?ath-regimet. Nokre på amerikansk venstreside unnskylda Saddam og sa at hans regime ikkje var verre enn mange andre verda rundt, men Saddam Hussein si framferd fortener ein eigen kategori, han tok i bruk vondskapsfull undertrykking, ofte inklusiv valdtekt og tortur av familiemedlemmer til mistenkte opposisjonelle. Få herskarar nokon stad i verda var så brutale, med eit unntak i den CIA-støtta regjeringa i Guatemala i åttiåra (begge desse regjeringane fekk, er det verd å merka seg, støtte frå USA under Reagan-administrasjonen).

Dei siste åra har ikkje amerikansk venstreside vore dei einaste til å oversjå dei forskjellige irakiske gruppene som lenge hadde kjempa mot Saddam sitt tyranni. Den amerikanske høgresida, nylegast under leiing av Bush-administrasjonen sine nykonservative, oversåg dei også i det dei såg etter irakiske allierte under opptrappinga til den USA-leia invasjonen. I staden for å søkja støtte hos grupper med brei støtte, som den shiamuslimske opposisjonen eller den sekulære venstresida, begge med nærvær i Irak så seint som i 2003, allierte Bush-administrasjonen seg med ei gruppe eksrojalistar leia av den no diskrediterte Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi sin far var solid plassert i den gamle irakiske overklassen og den rikaste mannen i Baghdad i 1958, når Irak sitt kortliva, britisk-innførte monarki vart kasta. Ba?athistane ? etterkvart under leiing av Saddam ? vann den påfølgjande maktkampen, og både shiamajoriteten og Irak si neststørste befolkingsgruppe, kurdarane, heldt fram med å ve ra taparar, utestengd frå! både innverknad og rikdom.

Opprørarane vs. dei revolusjonære

Fleire grupper slost mot dei USA-leia styrkane i Irak i dag, og framferda til amerikanarane har fått mange individuelle irakiske nasjonalistar til å slutta seg til dei. Dei amerikanske overtrampa inkluderer blant anna audmjukinga ? og torturen ? i Abu Ghraib.

Likevel er alle dei organiserte gruppene i den irakiske motstanden reaksjonære krefter av den eine eller den andre typen. Motstanden rundt og mellom byane Falluja, Tikrig og Baghdad i det såkalla ?sunnitriangelet? er leia av tidlegare ba?athistar som vonar å få det gamle minoritetsbaserte diktaturet attende. Som Juan Cole peiker på anerkjenner Nasir A?if al-Ani, sunnidelegaten frå det Irakiske Islamske Parti, ikkje ein gong shiamuslimane som majoritet i Irak (ikkje ein gong dei verste blant afrikaans-minoriteten i apartheidstyrte Sør-Afrika lata som dei svarte var ein minoritet). Nokre, som Naomi Klein i The Nation, ser ut til å ha falle for al-Mahdi-militsen som nyleg kjempa mot amerikanske styrkar i Najaf. Denne militsen er ei laust organisert shiamuslimsk opposisjonsgruppe leia av Muqtada al-Sadr. Han er ein ung mann som arva posisjonen sin etter at faren og to brødre vart drepte av Saddam. Sidan han manglar både modenheiten og treninga til ein eldre shialeiar har han imidlertid freis! ta å lokka til seg tilhengjarar frå meir respekterte shiamuslimske leiarar gjennom å forfekta militant shiamuslimsk lære, inkludert eksplisitt undertrykking av kvinner og homofile.

Den tredje store gruppa av opprørar i Irak består av utanlandske islamistar, tilknytt al Qa?ida, som til liks med både den saudiske kongefamilien og Osama bin Laden praktiserer ei endå meir ekstrem utgåve av Islam, wahabbismen. Denne gruppa sine nylege offer kan inkludera to kidnappa italienske kvinner (desse er no sett fri, red.anm) som arbeida fro den italienske gruppa Ei Bru til Baghdad, til liks med amerikanske antikrigsgrupper som arbeider i Irak ei gruppe som er motstandarar av den amerikanske okkupasjonen. Den amerikanske antikrigsgruppa Iraq Occupation Watch ser ut til å meina at medlemmer av den irakiske motstanden heldt dei fanga og seier på nettsidene sine at kidnapparane burde anerkjenna at dei italienske kvinnene er krigsmotstandar. På den andre sida seiar Jeremy Scahill i Democracy Now og Naomi Klein i The Nation at ei gruppe støtta av vestleg etterretning kan stå bak bortføringane. Slik ymtar dei om at CIA eller andre forsøker å diskreditera irakisk opposisjon.
Irakarane Bush-administrasjonen føretrekk er kanskje sekulære, men knappast meir beundringsverdige folk. Statsminister Iyad Allawi er ein tidlegare ba?athist som forlot partiet midt i syttiåra. Paul McGeough i Sydney Morning Herald rapporterte nyss om at Allawi personleg avretta (med ein pistol) seks irakarar i ein politistasjon i Baghdad like før han vart statsminister, sjølv om det framleis ikkje finst bevis for dette. CV-en hans er heller ikkje imponerande når det gjeld demokrati, han har allereie forbode det qatar-baserte TV-nettverket al-Jazeera og har innført enkelte unntakslover.

Verken motstandsgruppene mange på den amerikanske venstresida eller styresmaktene forfekta av den amerikanske høgresida ser ut til å reflektera oppfattingane og framtidshåpa til storparten av irakarane, som ser ut til å håpa på grupper som er uavhengige av både Saddam sitt styre og av den meir og meir diktatoriske Allawi-regjeringa. Blant deira moglegheiter finn ein moderate shiamuslimske grupper og sekulære venstregrupper. Gjennom deira leiing kan fleirtalet av irakarar håpa på auka innverknad for fyrste gong i historia.

Diverre ser vanlege irakarar ut til å ha vorte nær gløymd av både den amerikanske venstre- og den amerikanske høgresida. Irakarar må verta verdsette for det dei er, ikkje som bønder i eit partipolitisk spel. Slik sjåvinisme kan kanskje ventast frå ?Amerika fyrst?-talsmenn på høgrevingen, men kan ikkje forsvarast frå ein samvitsfull progressiv. Det er ikkje rart at mange på den amerikanske venstresida i staden for å sjå på Irak sin komplekse politiske realitet i staden klamrar seg til den gode kjensla frå enkle slagord.

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Denne artikkelen er skrive av Frank Smyth, ein amerikansk frilansjournalist som blant anna har rapportert frå geriljakrigar i El Salvador, Rwanda og Irak. I 1991 dekka han opprøret mot Saddam Hussein sitt regime, vart seinare teke til fange og sat to veker fengsla i Abu Ghraib. Artikkelen vart fyrst publisert i Foreign Policy In Focus si september-utgåve. Du finn nettsida til Frank Smyth på www.FrankSmyth.com og originalutgåva av artikkelen på www.fpif.org/papers/0409progiraq.html. Dilettant.no har fått løyve til å omsetja og publisera artikkelen.

Chi sono i progressisti in Iraq?

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The article below in Italian, “Who are the Progressives in Iraq? The Left, the Right and the Islamists,” was originally published in English by Foreign Policy in Focus on September 21, 2004. It was translated by Bianca Cerri of ReporterAssociati (www.reporterassociati.org), the independent Italian freelance journalist group based in Rome that is linked to IndyMedia (www.indymedia.org).

Original story found here.

Sia la stampa “alternativa” che quella ufficiale hanno dimenticato di riportare un evento che dimostra come il controllo americano sul futuro dell’Iraq sta forse tramontando.

Ad agosto, la Casa Bianca ha sostenuto la nascita di un Consiglio Nazionale Iracheno, formato da oltre cento gruppi tribali, etnici, religiosi, nella speranza di influenzare la composizione di un corpo elettorale. Durante il mese scorso, due grandi partiti politici, entrambi guardati da sempre con sospetto a Washington, hanno guadagnato terreno.

Molti accusano l’amministrazione Bush di voler pregiudicare le elezioni nazionali in Iraq, che si terranno a gennaio. Le elezioni indirette sono avvenute durante la guerra e l’Associated Press ha scritto che le bombe esplodevano accanto alla sala dei Convegni dove erano radunati i delegati. Fra l’altro, il numero dei vice-presidenti è salito da due a quattro. Una extrema razio per togliere un pò di potere a quello già grande della Casa Bianca.

Le votazioni di settembre hanno portato alla vittoria il delegato della Suprema Assemblea per la Rivoluzione Islamica in Iraq, Jawad al-Maliki, che ha preso 56 gruppi. Il gruppo sciita che rappresenta è stato usato come un giocattolo da Donald Rumsfeld durante l’invasione dell’Iraq.
Uno degli iracheni meno graditi a Washington è il Segretario Generale del Partito Comunista Iracheno (www.iraqcp.org), Hamid Majid Moussa, che ha preso 55 voti. L’Iraqi National Accord, presediuto da Rasim al-Awadi, un tempo sostenuto dalla CIA, assieme al suo capo, Iyad Allawi, vicino all’amministrazione Bush, che lo voleva primo ministro, ha avuto invece 53 voti.
Nasir A’if al-Ani, delegato del Partito Islamico Iracheno, gruppo sunnita ma oggi simpatico alla resistenza anti-americana a maggioranza Ba’athista, che opera ad ovest e a nord di Bagdad, è arrivato quarto, con 48 voti.

Ad ogni modo, l’elezione di uno qualsiasi di questi corpi elettorali non è un buon segno per Bush. Dopo la nascita del Consiglio, ma prima del voto che ha fatto prevalere i quattro rappresentati indicati, il portavoce della Casa Bianca, Scott McClennan, aveva dichiarato che la selezione del Consiglio era un segnale di avvertimento ai terroristi a non spingersi oltre.

Cosa accadrebbe se dalle prossime elezioni in Iraq dovesse uscire un governo diverso da quello che l’amministrazione Bush si aspettava. Juan Cole, che è tra i più grandi conoscitori di cultura araba ed insegna all’Università del Michigan, ha scritto nel suo blog che sarebbe una vera ironia se, dopo aver invaso l’Iraq, gli Stati Uniti si ritrovassero con un governo iracheno fatto di Comunisti, islamisti e Nazionalisti ex-Ba’thist.

GLI AMICI DEI MIEI NEMICI

La sinistra americana non conosce bene le molte realtà dell’Iraq e farebbe forse bene a raffinare la sua analisi. I gruppi come A.N.S.W.E.R. non vanno oltre una tremula analisi basata sull’anti-americanismo più sciatto. Gli editoriali di The Nation, come i reportages sulla radio libera che trasmette “Democracy Now” hanno invece ignorato completamente i progressisti iracheni e si sono focalizzati sulla resistenza anti-Usa, spesso esaltandola, senza però chiedersi chi siano i gruppi che la compongono e cosa rappresentino per l’Iraq.

Ormai, molti aspetti della guerra in Iraq sono chiari. L’invasione USA è stata il passo più avventato e pericoloso dai tempi del Vietnam e l’America sta già pagando caramente e che ancora più caramente pagherà in futuro. In meno di un anno, la guerra ha fatto saltare la sicurezza anche in America, oltre ad aver ucciso più di mille soldati. John Kerry ha faticato a trovare parole giuste per descrivere la situazione. Gli Stati Uniti hanno suscitato tanto odio da aver battuto ogni record storico (secondo le statistiche internazionale). E questo è esattamente il clima in cui i terroristi di al-Quaida, che sono davvero una minaccia per l’America, desiderano.

Gli attivisti americani che hanno protestato contro la guerra hanno dato un incalcolabile contributo, facendo sapere al mondo che milioni di persone in America non volevano l’invasione. Ma non significa che il nemico di un nemico sia un amico. Avere un’opinione diversa significa abbracciare una logica “orwelliana” che rischia di far apparire i pacifisti non solo male informati, ma anche cinici quanto i sostenitori della guerra contro i quali si battono. Per ironia, l’amministrazione Bush, decidendo di invadere l’Iraq e di fargli la guerra per rovesciare un dittatore tra i più odiati al mondo, si è attirata l’odio di quasi tutti i paesi.

CHI SONO QUELLI CHE ODIANO SADDAM?

Tra i denigratori di Saddam Hussein c’è sicuramente Osama Bin Laden, che rideva del leader iracheno definendolo “infedele” o “falso musulmano”. I musulmani radicali sanno infatti che nessun altro governo arabo ha assassinato altri musulmani quanto il regime Ba’athista di Saddam. Nessun altro ha torturato ed assassinato tanti comunisti quanto ha fatto Saddam nei lunghi anni del suo regime. Il Partito Nazionale della Rinascita era un partito contrario sia ai comunisti che agli islamisti, dedito soltanto al nazionalismo etnico. Voleva soprattutto mettere le minoranze al governo. Per tanti anni, è stato dominato dai Sunniti, che sono soltanto il 17{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} della Resistenza irachena, poco più dei bianchi in Sud Africa. Gli Sciiti, invece, rientrano nella categoria dei meno abbienti in assoluto ed hanno sofferto più di tutti durante l’embargo. La bassa macelleria di Saddam li considerava carne per foderare i cannoni durante le varie avventure militari. I curdi non hanno avuto più fortuna: pur essendo oltre il 20{2ef06ca992448c50a258763a7da34b197719f7cbe0b72ffbdc84f980e5f312af} della popolazione, non contavano nulla per Saddam.

Durante il regime di Saddam, negli anni tra il 1979 ed il 2003, la resistenza ha assunto varie forme: sciiti islamici, nazionalisti Curdi e comunisti. E le vittime sono state migliaia, a prescindere dal gruppo di appartenenza, a causa della brutale contro-insurrezione voluta dal governo Ba’athista.

Gran parte della sinistra americana sosteneva che, in fondo, il regime di Saddam non era peggiore degli altri. Invece, Saddam Hussein rappresenta una categoria a parte e si è servito di una repressione viscida, che comprendeva tortura e violenza carnale per i membri delle famiglie di sospetti dissidenti. Sono pochi i governanti che hanno raggiunto lo stesso grado di brutalità, a parte, forse, il Guatemala nel 1980. (L’America, ad ogni modo, ha sostenuto entrambi i governi tramite l’amministrazione Reagan).

Non è stata solo la sinistra ad ignorare i vari gruppi iracheni che hanno resistito alla tirannia di Saddam. La destra, sotto la guida di Bush, a sua volta, ha fatto lo stesso al momento della ricerca di alleati per la pianificazione strategica del 2003. Invece di prendere contatti con i gruppi contrari a Saddam, come i musulmani sciiti o la storica resistenza di sinistra, che avevano ancora clandestini armati nei quadri in Iraq, l’amministrazione Bush si è rivolta agli ex-monarchici guidati da Ahmed Chalabi, oggi uscito dalla grazia degli Stati Uniti. Chalabi, che viene dalla vecchia classe dirigente ed è figlio di uno degli uomini più ricchi del paese, che già nel 1958 aveva accumulato una grande fortuna, era un uomo molto in vista durante la breve monarchia imposta dagli inglesi. Poi, è arrivato Saddam, che, con un’azione rivoluzionaria, prese il potere, dal quale restarono esclusi sia la maggioranza sciita che i curdi.

LA RESISTENZA CONTRO I RIVOLUZIONARI

Molti hanno preso le armi contro le forze guidate dagli americani, che sono in questo momento in Iraq e, da parte loro, gli USA hanno avuto la mano pesante. Il che non è dispiaciuto ad alcuni nazionalisti.

Le irruzioni delle truppe nelle case, i maltrattamenti alle donne, i soldati che terrorizzavano i bambini, gli spari nei quartieri popolari che hanno ucciso molti civili, la tortura, le umiliazioni nel carcere di Abu Ghraib sono stati il risultato.

Intanto, a Fallujah, Tikrit e Bagdad, il cosiddetto triangolo sunnita, si andava organizzando la resistenza, guidata dai Ba’hatisti che aspirano a riportare al potere la vecchia dittatura composta da una minoranza. Secondo Juan Cole, il Consiglio Nazionale Islamico avverte la maggioranza Sci’a come una minoranza, cosa che non farebbe neppure l’afrikaner più recalcitrante nel Sud Africa dell’apartheid. Altri, come Naomi Klein, che scrive su The Nation, vedono bene le milizie di al-Mahdi, che recentemente si sono scontrate con i Marines. Si tratta di una milizia concepita alla rinfusa, di marchio Shiita, guidata da Muqtada al-Sadr. Al- Sadr, che è giovane, ha perso due fratelli ed il padre per mano di Saddam. Non è esperto nè ha la maturità di esponente clericale ed ha cercato di guadagnarsi il sostegno proponendo l’arruolamento militare degli esponenti più in vista dell’Islam sciita e predicando la repressione dei gay e delle donne.

Il terzo elemento di resistenza stabile all’interno dell’Iraq è composto da membri forestieri di al-Qaida, che, come Osama Bin Laden e la famiglia reale dell’Arabia Saudita, praticano una forma di islamismo ancora più rigida, setta Wahaabismo. Sono forse loro gli autori delle due donne italiane rapite, appartenenti all’organizzazione Un Ponte Per Bagdad, che, come gli anti-militaristi americani, si oppone all’occupazione americana. L’Iraq Occupation Watch crede di sì e, sul sito web ha scritto che i rapitori devono tenere conto che si tratta di due donne contrarie alla guerra.

Il commentatore di Democracy Now, Jeremy Scahill, e Naomi Klein, hanno invece detto sul Guardian che le due ragazze sarebbero state prese da un gruppo sostenuto dall’intelligence occidentale o dalla CIA, che avrebbe rapito le due donne per screditare l’opposizione irachena.

Gli iracheni favorevoli a Bush, come Ilyad Allawi, un ex- Ba’athista che ha lasciato il Partito a metà degli anni Settanta, non sono migliori. In un comando di polizia di Bagdad, Allawi uccise sei persone a colpi di pistola poco prima di essere nominato primo ministro, anche se non venne mai incriminato, come ha scritto Paul McGeough sul Sydney Morning Herald. Come credenziali, Allawi non possiede un gran che. Ha già oscurato al-Jazeera, la televisione qatariota, ed ha imposto leggi marziali.

E’ bene ricordare che neppure i gruppi di resistenti osannati dalla sinistra americana, nè il governo imposto dagli americani riflettono le aspirazioni degli iracheni, che sperano di affrancarsi sia dalla tirannia del passato come dal governo sempre più dittatoriale di Allawi.
Il popolo iracheno vedrebbe con favore un gruppo sciita moderato al governo del paese, o la sinistra storica, che darebbe al popolo la possibilità di essere per la prima volta artefice del proprio destino.

Sfortunatamente, gli iracheni del popolo sono stati ignorati dalla sinistra americana ma anche dalla destra. Non vogliono continuare ad essere le pedine di un gioco politico sciovinistico che potrà essere caro alle destre, ma che nessun rappresentante cosciente della sinistra progressista dovrebbe accettare. Eppure, la sinistra USA si accontenta di politiche basate sugli slogan e non sulla complessa e contraddittoria realtà dell’Iraq.

FRANK SMYTH è un giornalista freelance che ha “praticato” la guerrilla di sinistra nel Salvador, in Iraq e in Rwanda. E’ stato testimone diretto della rivolta contro il regime di Saddam Hussein nel 1991 ed è stato imprigionato nel carcere di Asbu Ghraib. Ha scritto questo articolo per Foreign Policy in Focus.

Hasty elections could divide Iraq

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Original story found here.

No matter which candidate wins in November, he will face his first challenge in Iraq.

President George W. Bush keeps promising that Iraq’s first national elections will be held in January, even if they only take place, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, in “three-quarters or four- fifths” of the nation. Sen. John Kerry, meanwhile, has yet to articulate any meaningful position on Iraq, as both candidates are reluctant to raise issues they can’t resolve.

But we cannot afford to ignore Iraq’s rising tide of violence. Yesterday, a rocket attack hit the Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad. And, if the Bush administration goes ahead quickly toward elections, the president may end up doing something that he promised he would never do: breaking up Iraq into three parts largely along ethnic and religious lines.

Of course, this is not what the administration had in mind for Iraq. But it will be one sure result of any attempt to hold elections in the middle of an escalating insurgent war. It would be risky if not impossible to hold elections in the Sunni Triangle, where most of the insurgency is based. But, if these areas are excluded from the voting, Iraq will be left with two noncontiguous, self-governing entities by the Kurdish minority in the north and the Shia majority in the south.

The insurgency itself is not what many may think. Rather than enjoy either broad geographic reach or diverse popular support, most of the armed resistance is limited to one part of Iraq and is being mostly carried out by one population group. Over the past month, a private security firm documented more than 2,300 attacks against U.S.-led forces stretching across the entire nation.

But about 80 percent of the attacks were concentrated in [or around] the Sunni Triangle along both the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys and in Baghdad itself.

There was only one attack last month, for example, in the southern city of Najaf, as by then the rebellion led by Muqtada al-Sadr, the young son of a cleric killed by Saddam Hussein, was already over. The Shia resistance declined after his al-Mahdi militia suffered heavy casualties and the more respected, elder surviving cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, brokered a cease-fire. Now al-Sistani is demanding nationwide elections, while al-Sadr has gone back and forth about whether he will disarm his militia and will participate in the January elections.

Sporadic Shia resistance continues in the Sadr city slum of Baghdad, but most of the remaining insurgency is concentrated in the Sunni Triangle.

For a while, Rumsfeld and others tried to blame foreign fighters tied to al-Qaida for most of the violence in Iraq. Today, these foreign Islamists remain active out of proportion to their relatively small numbers inside Iraq, and they are responsible, indeed, for many recent beheadings of kidnapped Westerners.

But by now even Rumsfeld’s own intelligence analysts agree that the bulk of the Iraqi resistance is not only homegrown but also deeply rooted among Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority population.

Even though ethnic Arabs of the mainstream Sunni Muslim religion are a majority in most Arab nations, they are a minority in Iraq of, at most, 17 percent of the population. Both the Kurds in the north, who constitute about 20 percent of Iraqis, and the Shia Arabs in the slums around Baghdad and in the south, who make up at least 60 percent of Iraqis, are more numerous. But it is Sunni Arabs, albeit through more rural tribes under Hussein than before, who have long dominated the region.

Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority has little incentive to compete in elections with other population groups, as introducing any pluralism into Iraq would only end the Sunnis’ long-standing monopoly on power. Combined with the heavy-handedness of U.S. forces, killing many civilians including women and children in cities like Fallujah and Samarra, the Sunni Arab insurgency has grown even deeper roots throughout the Sunni Triangle — which really has only two sides, along the Euphrates and Tigris. The insurgency also extends north along the Tigris as far as Mosul into areas dominated by Christian Arabs, who also rose to power under Hussein.

Even the best possible deployment of U.S. firepower and tactics cannot prevent the specter of moderate Iraqis being blown apart as they try to vote, even if it is possible to hold secure elections in most of the country.

Elections could well lead to more self-government for the “four-fifths” of Iraqis who live in either the south or the north. But these two model areas would still be split by a limited but raging insurgency alongside them and in between.

The Bush administration has backed itself into a corner. If elections are not held across Iraq, as al-Sistani is demanding, Washington risks provoking a broad Shia insurgency that would be even harder to handle than all the anti-American resistance there so far. Yet, holding elections while the Sunni insurgency is raging can only lead to the de facto breakup of Iraq.

Arguably, the administration has no choice, as it must keep its promise to Iraqis to hold elections. But, through elections in most but not all of the country, President Bush will be breaking the strategic promise he made not to divide the Iraqi nation. Rather than unite the nation under a legitimate government, wartime elections will split Iraq into three enclaves without any foreseeable plan to bring them back together.