Iraqi women :Untold stories

A book Review

Proff. Ndje Al Ali , The author

Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter

IHRR:

The war in Iraq has put the condition of Iraqi women firmly on the global agenda. For years, their lives have been framed by state oppression, economic sanctions and three wars. Now they must play a seminal role in reshaping their country’s future for the twenty-first century.
Nadje Al-Ali challenges the myths and misconceptions which have dominated debates about Iraqi women, bringing a much needed gender perspective to bear on the central political issue of our time. She traces the political history of Iraq from post-colonial independence, to the emergence of a women’s movement in the 1950s and Saddam Hussein’s early policy of state feminism. The book also discusses the increases in social conservatism, domestic violence and prostitution, and shows that, far from being passive victims, Iraqi women have been, and continue to be, key political actors. Following the invasion and occupation, al-Ali analyses the impact of Islam on women’s lives and argues that US-led calls for liberation may in the long term serve to oppress the women of Iraq further.

'This is an invaluable book; especially now when the multi-faceted identity and history of Iraqis is increasingly subsumed under crude and simplistic categories which do not relate to the lived experience of the people. With intellectual rigour, a profound sense of empathy and a calm passion, Nadje Al-Ali unearths the stories of Iraq's women, providing thoughtful analysis and reflection on the nature of memory and identity. She refuses any spurious unifying agenda and instead accepts the contradictions and the multiple truths which are the reality of people's lives. This book is also the author's personal story; it is an act of discovery and also the reclamation of an identity, painful layer by painful layer. For both the author, and for the women whose stories she relates, this book exhibits the complex and, often difficult, conjunction between history and personal lives.' - Maysoon Pachachi, Filmmaker
'Iraqi Women is an original and engrossing book that traces the life histories of women over four decades of Iraq's development. It speaks with an immediacy and an authenticity that should put many ersatz histories of Iraq to shame. I recommend it to all those interested in women's contributions to Iraq.' - Hala Fattah, Historian
'In this extraordinary book, Al-Ali deftly weaves together the personal narratives of a wide range of Iraqi women to illuminate the modern history of Iraq ... Particularly sobering is her balanced and sensitive analysis of the negative effects on women's rights and lives of the decade of sanctions and the current US- British occupation.' - Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Columbia University
'Nadje Al-Ali draws a vivid picture of Iraqi society and politics using intense personal narratives, and offers alternative visions of modern Iraqi history. An absorbing read.' - Sami Zubaida, Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck College, University of London
'Nadje Al-Ali delivers a nuanced and powerful interrogation of the complex relationships between experience, memory and truth, told through the dynamic narratives of Iraqi women. The result is a compelling critique of contemporary histories of Iraq which project back into the past relatively newly installed notions of religion and ethnicity.' - Suad Joseph, Professor of Anthropology & Women's Studies, University of California, Davis

'Nadje Al-Ali has written a finely nuanced account of the experiences of women in Iraq in the second half of the twentieth century. Her experience of Iraqi society as an insider/outsider, and her understanding of the political background of her informants enables her to explore the relationship between experiences, memory and truth in ways which will intrigue and excite her readers.'
Peter Sluglett, Professor of Middle Eastern History, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

'[A collection of] the thoughts, memories and experiences of more than 100 women who, at one time or another, have joined Iraq's huge diaspora in America, Britain and Jordan....the pattern [Al-Ali] draws of the way that educated women's lives have changed and rechanged since Iraq's 1958 revolution is fascinating.' - The Economist

‘[This] book makes a vital and original contribution to the literature on Iraq's modern history and to the literature on gender and women's studies. But at the same time its rich, fascinating and revealing text is enormously readable and accessible to the non-specialist, and it deserves a wide readership.’ – Al-Hayat

'The women in Nadje Sadig al-Ali's book have some remarkable stories to tell...[she] has performed a vital service in bringing together these testimonies of the human toll for Iraqis of western policy that is never adequately explored in the mainstream media.' - Labour Briefing

'A powerful antidote to the image of Iraqi women as passive victims, promoted by apologists for U.S. imperial policy in order to justify sanctions, war and occupation. It opens a window onto a past all our rulers would rather forget, reminding us that women's struggles for liberation have shaped Iraq's history, even when mere survival would have been achievement enough.' - Anne Alexander, International Socialism

'Moving, reflexive, and deeply felt… both timely and crucial' - Gender and Development

Contents

Introduction
1. Living in the Diaspora
2. Living with the Revolution: Life in the 1950s and 1960s
3. Living with the Baath: Days of Plenty and State Repression
4. Living with Wars on Many Fronts
5. Living with Sanctions
6. Living in Post-Baath Iraq

About the Author

Nadje Al-Ali is Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, London. Her recent publications include Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (2000) and New Approaches to Migration (2002). She is also a founding member of Act Together: Women's Action on Iraq and a member of Women in Black.

Academic Adoption Information

This book is used for teaching at the following institutions:

Queen's University Belfast

SOAS - University of London

City University London

Interview with the author Nadje Al-Ali

Nadje Al-Ali is a Senior Lecturer at University of Exeter (UK), where she specializes in women and gender issues in the Middle East, women’s movements and feminism, transnational migration and war, and conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. She is the author of Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement (Cambridge Middle East Studies, July 2000), which according to the Asian and African Studies Journal of Contemporary History, “breaks new ground and points to a future programme of original and refreshing research.” She is currently working on a new book about Iraqi women in the Diaspora, which will be completed this fall and published by Zed Press in 2007.

: Can you tell me about yourself and how you came to work in your field?

Nadje: My father is Iraqi, but I grew up in Germany. All of his family lived in Iraq, so I used to visit them regularly. This was long before Saddam Hussein, so my father wasn’t a political refugee. I have studied Iraq as a socio-anthropologist for the past five years. Currently, I teach at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, where I specialize in women and gender relations in the Middle East. I have written about gender relations and the impact of sanctions on women, and I work on migration and transnationalism in the context of foreign conflicts and regions.

A year and a half ago I was asked to write a book about the women of Iraq, post-2003, but I refused to do so because I believe it’s wrong to start the story at the end. The reader can not possibly understand what’s happening with women in Iraq without first knowing the historical context. So I told the publisher that if I were to write a book, it would have to be about the history of Iraqi women based on true life stories of the women themselves. He agreed, so I’ve been working on that book ever since and hope to have it completed by September.

For this book I have interviewed about 200 Iraqi women of different ethnic, religious and class backgrounds - mainly women who live in the Diaspora in the US, England, Germany and Jordan. In Jordan I was not only able to tap into the Iraqi community in Amman, but I’ve also interviewed Iraqi women who still live in Iraq, since many people frequently travel between Iraq and Jordan.

My goal for the book is to look at the many ways Iraqi women experienced different historical periods. How do they construct the past? How does the past relate to the present? A woman’s personal experience, her vision for the future, her relationships to the war, occupation and the current government — all these things determine how she constructs history, no matter where she is in the world.

: What historical periods are you including in the book?

Nadje: I started with the 50’s and 60’s because I thought it was important to portray Iraqi life before the Ba’ath party came to power in the coup d’etat of 1968. Next, I wanted to find out how women experienced the 1970s, which was the ‘golden era’ for many Iraqis. It is important to remember that Kurdish women or women in opposition groups were persecuted, arrested and tortured. One must investigate all sides of Iraqi society. During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, women were needed more than before because men were fighting at the front. When it became very clear that there was a demographic imbalance between Iraq and Iran, Saddam’s regime saw women in a new light. They encouraged every good Iraqi woman to produce at least five children to become future soldiers. So the Iraqi women of the 80’s were ‘super women’ because they were still very much a part of the labor force, despite pressures to raise a large family.

I will also look at the effects of 13 years of the most comprehensive sanction system ever imposed on a country. Unfortunately, I feel that this period is often written out of the contemporary debate about Iraq. Even the people who are against the occupation forget that it’s not just the past three years, but also the previous thirteen years of devastation and deteriorating infrastructure, which really had a huge impact on Iraqi women. When there is an economic crisis anywhere in the world, women are the first ones to be pushed back home.

The conclusion of the book looks at the current situation in Iraq. I’m introducing this by trying to map out the scene of the Diasporas around the world because this is where I spoke to the most women. There are so many different reasons why people have had to leave Iraq, both political and economic. Therefore, the millions of Iraqis who live abroad have to be considered when you examine Iraq and its society.

: How are Iraqi women organizing in the U.S.?

Nadje: There are many active women’s groups across the globe representing a wide range of views. Many women in the U.S. are too scared to be involved because they don’t have passports yet and don’t want to lose their green cards. One woman, who was a sympathizer of the Dawa party, told me that she had been living in the U.S. for 30 years, but after 2003 she had been coming and going from the U.S. to help family and friends back in Iraq. On one of her visits to Iraq the Americans took away her green card, and now she doesn’t know what to do. It is quite clear to me that there is no sense of security, and in the United States you hear women who are basically echoing what the Bush administration is telling them because there’s not much tolerance for women who have opposing views. It’s quite different in the U.K..

: In your view, are Iraqi women portrayed correctly in the public forums of the U.K. and U.S.?

Nadje: In terms of women, the main problem I always see in both the U.K. and the U.S. is in regards to Islam and its role in Iraq historically as well as today. I think Iraq in the past was an example of a country where women were suffering, regardless of religious ideologies. Saddam’s regime was not linked to Islam or Islamic identity; it was a secular regime. What women experienced had nothing to do with religion. Today there is this simplification going on because Iraq is a predominantly Muslim society and to many people Islam explains oppression. Women were not oppressed in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s because of Islam. They were oppressed because of the dictatorship, wars and economic sanctions.

: We have heard a lot about the military component of the conflict in Iraq, but there is little knowledge in the U.S. about the roles that civil society and women’s organizations play. Could you tell me about these?

Nadje: Yes, but let me first give some context. There was a period between 1958 and 1968 when the Communist Party had quite a bit of power and civil society flourished. When the Ba’aths came to power, there were no independent organizations; they were all state-controlled. In 2003 after the invasion and downfall of the regime, Iraq initially faced a few months of chaos and looting. Once that settled a bit, the first people to actually mobilize in Iraq were women and women’s organizations. For example, women came together as doctors providing free health care, and lawyers providing free legal advice.

The women also started to mobilize politically. In December 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council tried to push through what was called Article 137, which was basically an attempt to change a relatively progressive personal status code of family laws. These are the laws that govern marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, and they are based on Islamic law. Article 137 was a conservative interpretation and a big step backwards, but the law had to be signed by Bremer to take effect. He didn’t sign it because there was a lot of lobbying against the law both inside and outside Iraq from numerous Iraqi and international women’s organizations.

: How has the security situation in Iraq affected women’s participation in civil society?

Nadje: Due to three wars and political oppression where lots of men were executed or chose to emigrate, there is now a demographic imbalance. The low estimates of femaleheaded households are 55% to 65%, and some studies have shown that in certain parts of Iraq, it is 70%. The positive element is that women were very active, and so civil society organizations started forming. But it has become more difficult for women to participate in civil society as the security situation has gotten worse.

The additional complication is the relationship between the Diasporas and Iraqi women inside of Iraq. There is a need for educated Iraqi Diaspora women to contribute to the political transition. The problem is that many of them did not just take advisory roles; they took leadership roles and ended up alienating a lot of Iraqi women. I spoke with many women from the Diaspora who left Iraq and felt disillusioned. Those who stuck it out really gained respect among the women in Iraq considering the tough situation that they faced.

: What do you think is the biggest obstacle to national unity?

Nadje: First and foremost, I think that the occupation is increasingly playing on sectarian tensions. I do think that sectarian tensions existed in the country before to a certain extent. But I feel strongly that the occupation has increased the sectarian divisions, and they are not considering the fact that class differences and political differences cut across ethnic and religious lines.

I was speaking to people at Baghdad University who were telling me that in the past you had to be a ranking member of the Ba’ath party to be a dean or head of a department.

Now you have to be a Shiite and a member of one of the political parties. Of course, national unity is difficult when those who are either non-Shiite or choose to be part of non- Shiite political parties feel like the new system is not working for them.

: What are your thoughts on the current status of Iraqi women?

Nadje: In my opinion, I think that women may be the biggest losers in what is happening now in Iraq. They are being used as a symbolic break with the old regime, which was seen as secular despite its shift in the 1990s. The occupation forces have been emphasizing women’s issues, saying that “We are liberating Iraqi women.” However there’s a resistance to the occupation, which creates a resistance to women’s rights agendas from people who would not normally oppose women’s rights—they are simply reacting against anything from the occupation.

Also, the people who were sent to work on gender issues in Iraq are not gender experts. They don’t know the meaning of gender; they hate the word ‘feminism’. They’re not even people who are lobbying for women’s rights in the U.S. Building flashy women’s centers in Iraq to have photo opportunities with Condoleezza Rice and organizing meetings does not mainstream gender.

Looking historically at other struggles, wars and conflicts, I think women too often were told, “Let’s liberate the country first, and then we’ll look at women’s issues.” It didn’t work this way in Iraq, and now it might be too late. Having said that, I’m also very painfully aware of the dilemma that if I demand women’s rights now, while there’s actually an occupation, I might be doing Iraqi women more harm than good.

I’m really worried about women in Iraq in the long term.

The longer the occupation goes on, the more difficult it will be to unravel the damage that’s been done.

http://www.epic-usa.org/programs/thegroundtruth/nadje_al-ali

Read More

Kurdish expansion moves threaten stability in northern Iraq and squeezes minorities

Kurdish guards of Kurdistan region in the north of Iraq "Asayesh"

"There is no freedom, no democracy. You cannot speak about any ideas that disagree with the KDP," he said. "The people are boiling, and if this is not a fair election it will be like a volcano."

Kurdish flags now flutter in the sky in the Christian villages of Tel Keif, al Qosh, Qaraqosh and Bartella near Mosul, and the roads that curve through the mountains are manned by Kurdish soldiers loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party .

By Leila Fadel,

BASHIQA, Iraq — Kurdish forces have detained Murad Kashtu al Asi three times in the isolated district of Sinjar in Nineveh province. First, they beat him and accused him of being a terrorist and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party , a mostly Sunni Arab political party. The second time, they detained him for several hours, he said.

The third time, they hit him in the face with the butts of their guns. "If you leave alive this time, then work with us or we will kill you," he said his captors told him. He was held six days and released Sunday after U.S. forces intervened on his behalf, he said.

The Kurds never charged him with a crime and even called him their "brother." His offense was working with an Arab party in territory that the Kurds covet. "We don't want you to be with Arabs anymore . . . if they controlled the area (the existence of the) Yazidis will end," Asi recalled.

Asi is a member of the ancient Yazidi sect, most of whom consider themselves Kurdish. In the complex and often violent landscape of Iraq , the community, estimated at a few hundred thousand, is at the center of a tug of war over land between mostly Arab Iraq to the south and mostly Kurdish Iraq to the north.

Three minorities that populate the villages near the city of Mosul in Nineveh now find themselves under heavy Kurdish pressure: the Yazidis, whom some Muslims and Christians disdain for revering Malak Tawas, the peacock angel, which other religions see as devil worship; the Shabaks, a small ethnic group of Sunni and Shiite Muslims who claim Persian descent; and the Assyrian and Chaldean Christian communities, who speak Aramaic, the language of the biblical era.

Together they hold one of the keys to Kurdish ambitions to expand the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan on this strip of 300 miles between Sinjar near the Syrian border to Khanaqeen in Diyala province. Kurds chafed under the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime, but with provincial elections looming, many non-Kurds fear that they're more determined to achieve their greater Kurdistan .

"Any man who is not with them (the Kurds) — and especially not with the party (the Kurdistan Democratic Party ) — cannot live in the area because he will suffer, and for this reason I think all of us will leave the area," said Asi, who works in Sinjar with al Hadba , a Sunni Arab nationalist party. Every night he moves to avoid detention. Six days ago, however, he was found and held again.

Although world attention has focused on the battle to control oil-rich Kirkuk — where the late Saddam once purged Kurds, and now Kurds and Kurdish parties are purging Arabs — the strip of small villages connecting Sinjar to Khanaqeen has turned into a powder keg as Kurdish and Arab parties compete for the loyalties of the minorities. Both sides are using economic incentives, intimidation, detention and in some cases murder.

The force at the center of the conflict is the Peshmerga, Kurdish militias that mostly have been absorbed into the Iraqi Security Forces but remain loyal to the Kurdish parties in the north rather than the Shiite-dominated central government to the south. Sunni Arabs, who've cracked down on extremists elsewhere in Iraq , are angry and fearful of Kurdish rule in the region and have given the extremists space to terrorize Mosul .

"The whole front of where the ( Kurdistan Regional Government) borders the rest of Iraq from Sinjar through Kirkuk on down to Khanaqeen is timed for a misstep, especially a military misstep," said Brig. Gen. Tony Thomas , the U.S. commander in Nineveh province. "We've got a real challenge and a crisis on our hands."

The office of the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party , Massoud Barzani , an outspoken Kurdish nationalist and the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, rejects allegations that they're "Kurdifying" areas through intimidation, detention and extrajudicial killings. Barzani's chief of staff, Fuad Hussein , charged that accusations from the Shabak and Yazidi communities, whom the Kurds consider to be fellow Kurds, often were due to Arab backing and Arab racism against the Kurds. Any incidents of intimidation or abuse are isolated and not a policy, he said.

"Some people speak on the behalf of the Yazidis, and now there are a few who are speaking on behalf of the Shabak to say that there is a policy within Kurdish political parties or within the KRG to discriminate against them," Hussein said. "We are trying to do everything to protect these people. We believe in their rights. . . . We are trying to help them as we are trying to help ourselves."

Thomas said he'd seen little evidence of extrajudicial killings during his 14-month tour. "We hear allegations all the time. You'll hear about Kurdish pressure; it will be everything from economic and political pressure to more concerning forced apprehension and murder," he said.

The issue is so sensitive that many Western officials won't talk about Kurdish intimidation on the record. Residents who've complained to U.N. officials about intimidation by Kurdish forces are often subject to detention by those forces within hours of their meetings with the officials.

Earlier this year, Khanaqeen was a flash point between Kurdish forces and troops sent from the central government after the Kurdish soldiers who'd been in the mixed Kurdish and Arab area wouldn't stand down.

"They're definitely caught in the middle, and our job is just to make sure that we can protect the area," said Thomas, speaking of the minority groups. "It's a political hot potato right now that we're trying to contain."

Now that the Iraqi parliament has approved a provincial elections law, Kurds worry that they can't retain the power that they wield in mostly Sunni Arab Nineveh province.

Kurds dominate the provincial council, holding 31 of 41 seats. Peshmerga loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party dominate half of Mosul , and they've taken over many of the villages in the disputed areas within the 300-mile strip since 2003, and continue to expand.

An amendment to the provincial elections law giving minorities a quota in the upcoming elections gave Christians, Shabaks and Yazidis only one seat each in the province. Arab nationalists, worried that the minorities would act as an arm of the Kurds, extending their power base, reduced the minority representation from that in an earlier proposal.

Kurdish pressure is acute in Nineveh's minority villages.

In the Sinjar district of mostly Yazidis and Arabs, Sheik Abdullah al Yawar , a Sunni Arab tribal sheik who works with the nationalist party Hadba, said the Peshmerga and Kurdistan Democratic Party representatives were pressuring the community to accept appointed Kurdish leaders from the Kurdish region rather than residents of Sinjar.

"The people are now boiling because the army is used against them," he said.

"There is no freedom, no democracy. You cannot speak about any ideas that disagree with the KDP," he said. "The people are boiling, and if this is not a fair election it will be like a volcano."

Kurdish flags now flutter in the sky in the Christian villages of Tel Keif, al Qosh, Qaraqosh and Bartella near Mosul, and the roads that curve through the mountains are manned by Kurdish soldiers loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party .

At the entrances to Christian towns, Christian militiamen paid by the Kurdistan Regional Government man checkpoints.

In some areas, Kurds are attempting to buy loyalty with cash. Nineveh province should be the main provider of funds to the villages in its northern fields, but the Kurdistan Regional Government has flooded the minority villages with money to win their support. The Kurdish government's finance minister, Sarkis Aghajan , a Chaldean Catholic , has spent millions of dollars to restore run-down churches and provide homes for displaced Christians and bus transportation for university students to Mosul .

When about 10,000 Christians fled Mosul after a spate of about 15 killings in the span of two weeks, the Christian affairs offices and churches in these villages of the northern fields took them in and urged them not to return. The central government in Baghdad promised about $127 to each displaced family, but Aghajan topped that by giving each family $212 .

In every church in the village of Qaraqosh, about 18 miles east of Mosul , a photo of Aghajan hangs in the vestibule.

"As Christians we're trying to keep the same distance between us and the Arabs and us and the Kurds so we can live in peace," said Rama Daniel of the Assyrian Democratic Movement in Qaraqosh. "The Iraq flag is disappearing day by day."

Outside the Assyrian party's offices, the old Iraqi flag hangs above the building, a reminder of the protection that Christians had during Saddam's dictatorship. Kurds, however — the victims of Saddam's chemical, gas and aerial attacks — refuse to fly the flag.

"We do this to annoy them," Daniel said, referring to the Kurds and their expansion into the Christian towns.

Daniel was born and raised in the small Christian village, and he said that the money now flooding the town was worrying. The Kurdish militiamen, who were allied with the United States , arrived in his village after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, he said.

Daniel has stopped going to the churches, where Aghajan's smiling face reminds him of the powerful men who pay the religious leaders. The cameraman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement's TV channel was beaten up by Christians allied with the Kurdish region, and he was banned from church functions.

"All Iraqis saw an American occupation, and we saw a Kurdish occupation," he said. "Kurdification is harsher than Arabization. They are buying the people."

Across the area, the Kurdistan Regional Government has opened hundreds of schools over the years and appointed more than 400 teachers this year.

In the Chaldean Catholic churches, priests speak of Aghajan as a hero and say that they want to be part of the Kurdish region. Many priests and administrators at churches in the region whispered to a McClatchy reporter that the money that comes from the Kurdistan Regional Government pays for fixing up the churches and for other services.

In Bashiqa, a mostly Yazidi and Shabak village about 14 miles northeast of Mosul , the regional government has implemented a Kurdish school curriculum this year for the first time in a town where almost everyone speaks only Arabic. Kurds claim that Shabaks are Kurds and their language is a dialect of Kurdish, but not all Shabaks agree.

In many of the 35 Shabak villages east of Mosul and just south of Bashiqa, Arabic signs have slowly given way to Kurdish, the Iraqi red, white and black flags have slowly been replaced by red, green and yellow Kurdish flags, and schools have begun offering Kurdish language courses.

Those who publicly denounce the Kurdish expansion into Shabak villages and the Kurdish claim on the Shabak community fear for their lives.

Fadel Abbas is convinced that Kurdish security forces killed his father, Abbas Kadhim, a member of the Shabak assembly. Kadhim publicly called for Shabaks to be recognized as an ethnic community and not be allowed to melt into Kurdish society, a view that angered local representatives of the Kurdistan Democratic Party , his family said.

Kadhim wrote pieces on Shabak Web sites calling for the community to preserve its identity, traditions and loyalty to the Nineveh region and criticized Shabak members of the Kurdish parties. Days later he received a threat from the Asayesh, Kurdish intelligence, his family said.

On July 13 , Kadhim was shot down about 30 yards from a Peshmerga checkpoint.

The Shabak party posted accusations against the Kurdish parties online, filed a criminal case and gave evidence to the United Nations . The United Nations demanded a thorough investigation, but no one has been arrested, and Kadhim's family members say that they're being watched.

"He wrote that we are Shabak, we are the residents of Nineveh fields, and we demand our rights," said his wife, Sahla Jawad Ramadan . "That's why he was targeted. We told the United Nations and the American Embassy about this."

Some even accuse the Kurds of killing Christians to give the illusion that minority communities can find a haven only under Kurdish rule.

When about 15 Christians were killed last month in Mosul , other Christians fled to the Kurdish or Kurdish-protected areas for safety as Arabs, Kurds, Shabaks and Yazidis have in the past. Rumors circulated that Kurds had killed the Christians to draw them into the Kurdish region and side with them when it came time to decide whether the disputed areas would land with the semi-autonomous Kurdish north or with Nineveh province.

The left bank of the city, where the spate of killings took place, is protected by Peshmerga. A battalion loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party was investigated and found to have failed to protect the population.

The right bank is rife with Arab extremists, including al Qaida in Iraq , who typically carry out attacks and killings there.

However, the U.S. military, which has control over the province, said it had proof that Sunni Arab extremists within al Qaida in Iraq had targeted the Christian community.

Christians who fled to surrounding villages said they didn't know who'd killed their brethren. They were so fearful they wouldn't give their names.

"We don't know if those who killed us are among us now," one woman said.

Mosul , a mostly Sunni Arab city, is by far the bloodiest place in Iraq now, still at war while overall the country's violence has lessened. Kurds provide services to those who side with them, while Sunni Arab extremists play on Iraqi Arabs' fears of Kurdish expansion. Those in the middle are subject to terrorism and in some cases have been murdered, but it isn't clear by whom. Kurds also are being run out of the city.

In a small coffee shop in Bashiqa, a village near Mosul , an uncle and his nephew debated their history as Yazidis and where they belong in the new Iraq .

Khalil Jamal , 74, wore a traditional Arab headdress, and his voice was deep and gravelly.

"It's not in our hands," he told his nephew Khadar Jamal .

"Let's suppose we want to join Kurdistan . Will the government let us?" said Khadar Jamal , who's 45.

"It is influencing our lives. They are killing us to empower themselves," he said, referring to both Arabs and Kurds.

"If I want to stay a part of Mosul and the others want it, it doesn't matter. We are Yazidis, and Yazidis are to join Kurdistan whether we accept it or not," Khalil Jamal said.

The debate moved to the roots of the Yazidis. Their holy scriptures are written in Kurdish, they said.

"My clothes are Kurdish and our religion is Kurdish," Khadar Jamal said, pointing to the traditional clothes he wore.

Another patron piped up angrily.

"We are not Kurds; our texts are also in Arabic and some in Persian," he said.

Khalil Jamal sighed.

"I am Yazidi, and we need a voice," he said. "In the end, we want whoever gives us security."

In Sheikhan, another small village near Mosul , the spiritual leader of the Yazidis sat on the colorful woven rug reserved for the man who leads the religious community. He said the Yazidis were Kurds but that the community must be protected from Kurdish and Arab extremists. The community is being pulled in every direction, he said.

"The Yazidis have no problem with the Muslims, but we are in this place and we are considered the winning card," said the spiritual leader, Baba Sheikh. "We are the balance, and whoever wins the Yazidis tips the scale."

Kurdish expansion moves threaten stability in northern Iraq

"There is no freedom, no democracy. You cannot speak about any ideas that disagree with the KDP," he said. "The people are boiling, and if this is not a fair election it will be like a volcano."

Kurdish flags now flutter in the sky in the Christian villages of Tel Keif, al Qosh, Qaraqosh and Bartella near Mosul, and the roads that curve through the mountains are manned by Kurdish soldiers loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party .

By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers Leila Fadel

Nov 11, 08

BASHIQA, Iraq — Kurdish forces have detained Murad Kashtu al Asi three times in the isolated district of Sinjar in Nineveh province. First, they beat him and accused him of being a terrorist and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party , a mostly Sunni Arab political party. The second time, they detained him for several hours, he said.

The third time, they hit him in the face with the butts of their guns. "If you leave alive this time, then work with us or we will kill you," he said his captors told him. He was held six days and released Sunday after U.S. forces intervened on his behalf, he said.

The Kurds never charged him with a crime and even called him their "brother." His offense was working with an Arab party in territory that the Kurds covet. "We don't want you to be with Arabs anymore . . . if they controlled the area (the existence of the) Yazidis will end," Asi recalled.

Asi is a member of the ancient Yazidi sect, most of whom consider themselves Kurdish. In the complex and often violent landscape of Iraq , the community, estimated at a few hundred thousand, is at the center of a tug of war over land between mostly Arab Iraq to the south and mostly Kurdish Iraq to the north.

Three minorities that populate the villages near the city of Mosul in Nineveh now find themselves under heavy Kurdish pressure: the Yazidis, whom some Muslims and Christians disdain for revering Malak Tawas, the peacock angel, which other religions see as devil worship; the Shabaks, a small ethnic group of Sunni and Shiite Muslims who claim Persian descent; and the Assyrian and Chaldean Christian communities, who speak Aramaic, the language of the biblical era.

Together they hold one of the keys to Kurdish ambitions to expand the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan on this strip of 300 miles between Sinjar near the Syrian border to Khanaqeen in Diyala province. Kurds chafed under the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime, but with provincial elections looming, many non-Kurds fear that they're more determined to achieve their greater Kurdistan .

"Any man who is not with them (the Kurds) — and especially not with the party (the Kurdistan Democratic Party ) — cannot live in the area because he will suffer, and for this reason I think all of us will leave the area," said Asi, who works in Sinjar with al Hadba , a Sunni Arab nationalist party. Every night he moves to avoid detention. Six days ago, however, he was found and held again.

Although world attention has focused on the battle to control oil-rich Kirkuk — where the late Saddam once purged Kurds, and now Kurds and Kurdish parties are purging Arabs — the strip of small villages connecting Sinjar to Khanaqeen has turned into a powder keg as Kurdish and Arab parties compete for the loyalties of the minorities. Both sides are using economic incentives, intimidation, detention and in some cases murder.

The force at the center of the conflict is the Peshmerga, Kurdish militias that mostly have been absorbed into the Iraqi Security Forces but remain loyal to the Kurdish parties in the north rather than the Shiite-dominated central government to the south. Sunni Arabs, who've cracked down on extremists elsewhere in Iraq , are angry and fearful of Kurdish rule in the region and have given the extremists space to terrorize Mosul .

"The whole front of where the ( Kurdistan Regional Government) borders the rest of Iraq from Sinjar through Kirkuk on down to Khanaqeen is timed for a misstep, especially a military misstep," said Brig. Gen. Tony Thomas , the U.S. commander in Nineveh province. "We've got a real challenge and a crisis on our hands."

The office of the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party , Massoud Barzani , an outspoken Kurdish nationalist and the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, rejects allegations that they're "Kurdifying" areas through intimidation, detention and extrajudicial killings. Barzani's chief of staff, Fuad Hussein , charged that accusations from the Shabak and Yazidi communities, whom the Kurds consider to be fellow Kurds, often were due to Arab backing and Arab racism against the Kurds. Any incidents of intimidation or abuse are isolated and not a policy, he said.

"Some people speak on the behalf of the Yazidis, and now there are a few who are speaking on behalf of the Shabak to say that there is a policy within Kurdish political parties or within the KRG to discriminate against them," Hussein said. "We are trying to do everything to protect these people. We believe in their rights. . . . We are trying to help them as we are trying to help ourselves."

Thomas said he'd seen little evidence of extrajudicial killings during his 14-month tour. "We hear allegations all the time. You'll hear about Kurdish pressure; it will be everything from economic and political pressure to more concerning forced apprehension and murder," he said.

The issue is so sensitive that many Western officials won't talk about Kurdish intimidation on the record. Residents who've complained to U.N. officials about intimidation by Kurdish forces are often subject to detention by those forces within hours of their meetings with the officials.

Earlier this year, Khanaqeen was a flash point between Kurdish forces and troops sent from the central government after the Kurdish soldiers who'd been in the mixed Kurdish and Arab area wouldn't stand down.

"They're definitely caught in the middle, and our job is just to make sure that we can protect the area," said Thomas, speaking of the minority groups. "It's a political hot potato right now that we're trying to contain."

Now that the Iraqi parliament has approved a provincial elections law, Kurds worry that they can't retain the power that they wield in mostly Sunni Arab Nineveh province.

Kurds dominate the provincial council, holding 31 of 41 seats. Peshmerga loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party dominate half of Mosul , and they've taken over many of the villages in the disputed areas within the 300-mile strip since 2003, and continue to expand.

An amendment to the provincial elections law giving minorities a quota in the upcoming elections gave Christians, Shabaks and Yazidis only one seat each in the province. Arab nationalists, worried that the minorities would act as an arm of the Kurds, extending their power base, reduced the minority representation from that in an earlier proposal.

Kurdish pressure is acute in Nineveh's minority villages.

In the Sinjar district of mostly Yazidis and Arabs, Sheik Abdullah al Yawar , a Sunni Arab tribal sheik who works with the nationalist party Hadba, said the Peshmerga and Kurdistan Democratic Party representatives were pressuring the community to accept appointed Kurdish leaders from the Kurdish region rather than residents of Sinjar.

"The people are now boiling because the army is used against them," he said.

"There is no freedom, no democracy. You cannot speak about any ideas that disagree with the KDP," he said. "The people are boiling, and if this is not a fair election it will be like a volcano."

Kurdish flags now flutter in the sky in the Christian villages of Tel Keif, al Qosh, Qaraqosh and Bartella near Mosul, and the roads that curve through the mountains are manned by Kurdish soldiers loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party .

At the entrances to Christian towns, Christian militiamen paid by the Kurdistan Regional Government man checkpoints.

In some areas, Kurds are attempting to buy loyalty with cash. Nineveh province should be the main provider of funds to the villages in its northern fields, but the Kurdistan Regional Government has flooded the minority villages with money to win their support. The Kurdish government's finance minister, Sarkis Aghajan , a Chaldean Catholic , has spent millions of dollars to restore run-down churches and provide homes for displaced Christians and bus transportation for university students to Mosul .

When about 10,000 Christians fled Mosul after a spate of about 15 killings in the span of two weeks, the Christian affairs offices and churches in these villages of the northern fields took them in and urged them not to return. The central government in Baghdad promised about $127 to each displaced family, but Aghajan topped that by giving each family $212 .

In every church in the village of Qaraqosh, about 18 miles east of Mosul , a photo of Aghajan hangs in the vestibule.

"As Christians we're trying to keep the same distance between us and the Arabs and us and the Kurds so we can live in peace," said Rama Daniel of the Assyrian Democratic Movement in Qaraqosh. "The Iraq flag is disappearing day by day."

Outside the Assyrian party's offices, the old Iraqi flag hangs above the building, a reminder of the protection that Christians had during Saddam's dictatorship. Kurds, however — the victims of Saddam's chemical, gas and aerial attacks — refuse to fly the flag.

"We do this to annoy them," Daniel said, referring to the Kurds and their expansion into the Christian towns.

Daniel was born and raised in the small Christian village, and he said that the money now flooding the town was worrying. The Kurdish militiamen, who were allied with the United States , arrived in his village after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, he said.

Daniel has stopped going to the churches, where Aghajan's smiling face reminds him of the powerful men who pay the religious leaders. The cameraman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement's TV channel was beaten up by Christians allied with the Kurdish region, and he was banned from church functions.

"All Iraqis saw an American occupation, and we saw a Kurdish occupation," he said. "Kurdification is harsher than Arabization. They are buying the people."

Across the area, the Kurdistan Regional Government has opened hundreds of schools over the years and appointed more than 400 teachers this year.

In the Chaldean Catholic churches, priests speak of Aghajan as a hero and say that they want to be part of the Kurdish region. Many priests and administrators at churches in the region whispered to a McClatchy reporter that the money that comes from the Kurdistan Regional Government pays for fixing up the churches and for other services.

In Bashiqa, a mostly Yazidi and Shabak village about 14 miles northeast of Mosul , the regional government has implemented a Kurdish school curriculum this year for the first time in a town where almost everyone speaks only Arabic. Kurds claim that Shabaks are Kurds and their language is a dialect of Kurdish, but not all Shabaks agree.

In many of the 35 Shabak villages east of Mosul and just south of Bashiqa, Arabic signs have slowly given way to Kurdish, the Iraqi red, white and black flags have slowly been replaced by red, green and yellow Kurdish flags, and schools have begun offering Kurdish language courses.

Those who publicly denounce the Kurdish expansion into Shabak villages and the Kurdish claim on the Shabak community fear for their lives.

Fadel Abbas is convinced that Kurdish security forces killed his father, Abbas Kadhim, a member of the Shabak assembly. Kadhim publicly called for Shabaks to be recognized as an ethnic community and not be allowed to melt into Kurdish society, a view that angered local representatives of the Kurdistan Democratic Party , his family said.

Kadhim wrote pieces on Shabak Web sites calling for the community to preserve its identity, traditions and loyalty to the Nineveh region and criticized Shabak members of the Kurdish parties. Days later he received a threat from the Asayesh, Kurdish intelligence, his family said.

On July 13 , Kadhim was shot down about 30 yards from a Peshmerga checkpoint.

The Shabak party posted accusations against the Kurdish parties online, filed a criminal case and gave evidence to the United Nations . The United Nations demanded a thorough investigation, but no one has been arrested, and Kadhim's family members say that they're being watched.

"He wrote that we are Shabak, we are the residents of Nineveh fields, and we demand our rights," said his wife, Sahla Jawad Ramadan . "That's why he was targeted. We told the United Nations and the American Embassy about this."

Some even accuse the Kurds of killing Christians to give the illusion that minority communities can find a haven only under Kurdish rule.

When about 15 Christians were killed last month in Mosul , other Christians fled to the Kurdish or Kurdish-protected areas for safety as Arabs, Kurds, Shabaks and Yazidis have in the past. Rumors circulated that Kurds had killed the Christians to draw them into the Kurdish region and side with them when it came time to decide whether the disputed areas would land with the semi-autonomous Kurdish north or with Nineveh province.

The left bank of the city, where the spate of killings took place, is protected by Peshmerga. A battalion loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party was investigated and found to have failed to protect the population.

The right bank is rife with Arab extremists, including al Qaida in Iraq , who typically carry out attacks and killings there.

However, the U.S. military, which has control over the province, said it had proof that Sunni Arab extremists within al Qaida in Iraq had targeted the Christian community.

Christians who fled to surrounding villages said they didn't know who'd killed their brethren. They were so fearful they wouldn't give their names.

"We don't know if those who killed us are among us now," one woman said.

Mosul , a mostly Sunni Arab city, is by far the bloodiest place in Iraq now, still at war while overall the country's violence has lessened. Kurds provide services to those who side with them, while Sunni Arab extremists play on Iraqi Arabs' fears of Kurdish expansion. Those in the middle are subject to terrorism and in some cases have been murdered, but it isn't clear by whom. Kurds also are being run out of the city.

In a small coffee shop in Bashiqa, a village near Mosul , an uncle and his nephew debated their history as Yazidis and where they belong in the new Iraq .

Khalil Jamal , 74, wore a traditional Arab headdress, and his voice was deep and gravelly.

"It's not in our hands," he told his nephew Khadar Jamal .

"Let's suppose we want to join Kurdistan . Will the government let us?" said Khadar Jamal , who's 45.

"It is influencing our lives. They are killing us to empower themselves," he said, referring to both Arabs and Kurds.

"If I want to stay a part of Mosul and the others want it, it doesn't matter. We are Yazidis, and Yazidis are to join Kurdistan whether we accept it or not," Khalil Jamal said.

The debate moved to the roots of the Yazidis. Their holy scriptures are written in Kurdish, they said.

"My clothes are Kurdish and our religion is Kurdish," Khadar Jamal said, pointing to the traditional clothes he wore.

Another patron piped up angrily.

"We are not Kurds; our texts are also in Arabic and some in Persian," he said.

Khalil Jamal sighed.

"I am Yazidi, and we need a voice," he said. "In the end, we want whoever gives us security."

In Sheikhan, another small village near Mosul , the spiritual leader of the Yazidis sat on the colorful woven rug reserved for the man who leads the religious community. He said the Yazidis were Kurds but that the community must be protected from Kurdish and Arab extremists. The community is being pulled in every direction, he said.

"The Yazidis have no problem with the Muslims, but we are in this place and we are considered the winning card," said the spiritual leader, Baba Sheikh. "We are the balance, and whoever wins the Yazidis tips the scale."

http://www.christiansofiraq.com/kurdishexpansioninnortherniraq.html

Read More

What US Left Behind in Iraq is Even Uglier Than You Think

by Nir Rosen

Hundreds of cars waiting in the heat to slowly pass through one of the dozens of checkpoints and searches they must endure every day. The constant roar of generators. The smell of fuel, of sewage, of kabobs. Automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles, out of SUVs with tinted windows. Mountains of garbage. Rumors of the latest assassination or explosion. Welcome to the new Iraq, same as the old Iraq -- even if Barack Obama has declared George W. Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom over and announced the beginning of his own Operation New Dawn, and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared Iraq sovereign and independent.

Iraq has had several declarations of sovereignty since the first one in June 2004. As with earlier milestones, it's not clear what exactly this one means. Since the Americans have declared the end of combat operations, U.S. Stryker and MRAP vehicles can be seen conducting patrols without Iraqi escorts in parts of the country and the Americans continue to conduct unilateral military operations in Mosul and elsewhere, even if under the guise of "force protection" or "countering improvised explosive devices." American military officers in Iraq told me they were irate with the politically driven announcement from the White House that combat troops had withdrawn. Those remaining still consider themselves combat troops, and commanders say there is little change in their rules of engagement -- they will still respond to threats pre-emptively.

Iraq is still being held back from full independence -- and not merely by the presence of 50,000 U.S. soldiers. The Status of Forces Agreement, which stipulates that U.S. forces will be totally out by 2011, deprives Iraq of full sovereignty. The U.N.'s Chapter 7 sanctions force Iraq to pay 5 percent of its oil revenues in reparations, mostly to the Kuwaitis, denying Iraqis full sovereignty and isolating them from the international financial community. Saudi and Iranian interference, both political and financial, has also limited Iraq's scope for democracy and sovereignty. Throughout the occupation, major decisions concerning the shape of Iraq have been made by the Americans with no input or say by the Iraqis: the economic system, the political regime, the army and its loyalties, the control over airspace, and the formation of all kinds of militias and tribal military groups. The effects will linger for decades, regardless of any future milestones the United States might want to announce.

The Americans, meanwhile, worry about losing their leverage at a time when concerns still run high about a renewed insurgency, Shiite militias, and the explosion of the Arab-Kurdish powder keg everybody's been talking about for the last seven years. Many in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad wonder what Obama's vision for Iraq is. By the summer of 2006, Bush woke up every day and wanted to know what was happening in Iraq. Obama is much more detached.

American diplomats also worry that they will soon lose their ability to understand and influence the country. In addition to Baghdad, there will soon be only four other posts. Much of the south will be without any U.S. presence: There will be no Americans between Basra and Baghdad, no Americans in Anbar or Salahuddin provinces. Some in the embassy fear they are abandoning the "Shiite heartland." The diplomats still in the country will have less mobility and access, even if they are nominally taking the lead over the military, because it will be harder to find military escorts when they want to travel. "You can't commute to a relationship," I was told.

At best, unable to secure areas to visit by helicopter or communicate with Iraqis navigating the hassle of trying to get into the Green Zone, the diplomats in the four outposts will act as listening posts or trip wires. They hope to be viewed as the honest broker between Kurds and Arabs in northern Iraq, where the American focus has shifted as part of the consolidation of "strategic gain."

But staffers complain that they lack the funding to do their job right, even though the four posts outside Baghdad are going to be very expensive. They say the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the war in Iraq but is now pinching its pennies over secretarial salaries.

One hope for change rested on this year's national election, held on March 7, which ended in a virtual tie between former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya party and Maliki's State of Law Coalition. The election nonetheless did represent a milestone in the country's political evolution. Regardless of the outcome -- Maliki contested but could not overturn the vote count -- the elections will not precipitate a return to civil war. The state is strong, and the security forces take their work seriously -- perhaps too seriously. The sectarian militias have been beaten and marginalized, and the Sunnis have accepted their loss in the civil war.

But the controversies surrounding the still-unresolved contest point to some serious long-term political rifts. The increased pace of the U.S. withdrawal coupled with the still-unresolved state of the political map and meddling by the United States, the Saudis, Iran, and even Turkey, has lead to a vicious zero-sum competition as Iraqi leaders jockey for power.

Maliki was a popular candidate, supported by Iraqis for having crushed both Sunni and Shiite armed groups, and he came in first as an individual politician, with Allawi a distant second. But Maliki's candidates came a close second to Iraqiya -- a surprise after Allawi's dismal performance in 2005.

On the Allawi side are Sunnis, restless with perceived Iranian influence in the country. Opposition to Maliki often centers on his suspected ties to Iran -- an allegation that echoes the tendentious Sunni notion that an Arab cannot have a strong Shiite identity without being pro-Iranian. And notwithstanding the Bush administration's "80 percent" approach -- focusing on the Shiites and Kurds and ignoring the Sunnis -- the group's frustration could lead to destabilization. Sunnis might not be able to overthrow the new Shiite sectarian order, but they can still mount a limited challenge to it. The Kurds, with only the mountains as their friends (to paraphrase a Kurdish proverb), were able to destabilize Iraq for 80 years. Sunni Arabs are present in much more of the country and have allies throughout the Arab world who can supply them well enough to destabilize Iraq more than the Kurds ever could.

The Americans want to keep Allawi around for exactly that reason: They see him as mollifying Sunni anger. "We would like to see an important role for Allawi," U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey said in an August press conference, arguing that the Shiite ex-Baathist was able to organize a historic shift in the post-war political dynamic by coalescing Sunni and secular forces behind a new democratic process. U.S. diplomats in Baghdad tell me that outgoing U.S. commander Gen. Raymond Odierno is extremely worried about a renewed insurgency if Allawi's Iraqiya list isn't satisfied.

Allawi can't simply be made prime minister, given that he doesn't have support from across the political spectrum. Instead he may be given an enhanced presidency with increased powers, coupled with some checks -- including term limits -- on Prime Minister Maliki.

Shiites and members of Maliki's cadre, meanwhile, are not at all pleased with the idea of a President Allawi. Oil Minister Hussein Shahrastani, who is close to Maliki, has warned the Americans that many in the Shiite elite would see a powerful Allawi presidency as a coup, overthrowing the new order and restoring the bad old Saddam days. Many in Maliki's party are strongly anti-Sunni, just as many in Allawi's party are strongly anti-Shiite, and they fear the repetition of history.

Maliki has told confidants that if he leaves office, everything he has worked for over the last four years will fall apart. He believes that he almost singlehandedly rebuilt the Iraqi state. Without him there is no State of Law party, since it was built around his reputation and Maliki is the individual candidate who won the most votes. The Sadrists would then become the most powerful Shiite bloc and the clock would turn back to the anarchy and misery of 2006.

It's hard to disagree. The prime minister has amassed a vast and relatively stable infrastructure of power. Removing him and his advisors and security institutions at a time like this could be disastrous. Maliki has managed to win over skeptical Sunnis after his 2008 attack on Shiite militias and remake himself into a candidate perceived by many as a secular nationalist.

The Americans certainly believe there are no non-Maliki scenarios, given the risk of the Sadrists taking over. "We've done the math," General Stephen Lanza, the outgoing U.S. military spokesman, said at an event in August.

"We have no real power or authority here," U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey said. "We have no right to interject ourselves in any kind of threatening way. The only thing we have said that comes close to a rethink of our policies is if you had a government where the Sadrists played a critical role, we would really have to ask whether we can have much of a future in this country given their political position." Beyond exiting the country, Jeffrey said, the United States might back off on its vigorous push to convince the United Nations to remove the Chapter 7 sanctions on Iraq, if the Sadrists were to take a dominant role in the government. "We probably wouldn't be too enthused with that mission," said Jeffrey, "and there are a thousand other examples like that." For their part, the Sadrists refuse to meet with the Americans.

The Sadrists are, however, talking with Allawi, offering support in return for control over the Ministry of the Interior and the release of at least 2,000 of their men from Iraqi detention. Allawi has justified his flirtation with the violently anti-American Sadrists on the grounds that they are merely misguided and can be controlled.

It's a move that could seriously backfire. Maliki says privately that the Sadrists are dangerous. He doesn't believe that Allawi can control them, insisting that he comes from their world and he knows them. He insists that it's not within his legal power to simply free their prisoners. And the Kurds have been dismayed by Allawi's dalliance with the Sadrists; they don't want the Sadrists to be the kingmakers. The Kurds also worry that many of the dominant Sunni politicians in Allawi's list are hostile to their vision of the boundary dividing Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq. Because of this, the Kurds now oppose an Allawi premiership and have thrown their support behind Maliki.

Frustrated with his string of PR defeats, Allawi has taken refuge in confidence-boosting visits to Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and Syria. But none of that helps him much in Baghdad, where it matters, and it certainly doesn't help him in Iran, where an Allawi premiership would be seen as a victory for Tehran's regional rivals, the Saudis, not to mention a victory for the Baathists. Iran prefers Maliki, even if their relationship is not nearly as close as it's been made out to be by the Sunnis.

In fact, Iraq's powerful neighbor has failed to achieve many of its goals in Iraq. Iran has pawns in Iraq but not proxies. Even the Iran-formed Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq actually dislikes Iran. Its members, former Iraqi exiles who came together in Tehran during Saddam's rule, remember the humiliation of being looked down upon by Iranians for being Arabs. Shiite parties have their own power base as well, and don't need Iranian support. Still, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad remains very active, and the Americans refuse to meet with him -- a surprising change given the meetings that took place under the Bush administration.

As for the Turks, they want to turn the Kurdish regional government in the north into a Turkish vassal state. They are also deeply involved in Baghdad. Ambassador Jeffrey maintains that Turkey can live with a Maliki premiership, and this is true, although Turkey prefers Allawi; the Turkish ambassador dislikes Maliki and helped organize the Iraqiya list. (Maliki took this personally and temporarily stripped the Turkish ambassador of his access to the Green Zone.)

In a sad sense, none of this maneuvering actually matters all that much. Regardless of who becomes prime minister or president, Iraq is about to become increasingly authoritarian. Oil revenues will not kick in for several years, so services are not going to improve. Even when revenues reach Iraqi coffers, infrastructure costs will eat them up for the near future. The lack of services means the government will face street-level dissatisfaction and become harsher and more dictatorial in response -- even if a democratic façade persists.

For Iraqis, then, there is no end in sight. Since the occupation began in 2003, more than 70,000 Iraqis have been killed. Many more have been injured. There are millions of new widows and orphans. Millions have fled their homes. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men have spent years in prisons. The new Iraqi state is among the most corrupt in the world. It is only effective at being brutal and providing a minimum level of security. It fails to provide adequate services to its people, millions of whom are barely able to survive. Iraqis are traumatized. Every day there are assassinations with silenced pistols and the small magnetic car bombs known as sticky bombs. In neighboring countries, hundreds of thousands of refugees languish in exile, sectarianism is on the upswing, and weapons, tactics, and veterans of the Iraqi jihad are spreading.

Seven years after the disastrous American invasion, the cruelest irony in Iraq is that, in a perverse way, the neoconservative dream of creating a moderate, democratic U.S. ally in the region to counterbalance Iran and Saudi Arabia has come to fruition. But even if violence in Iraq continues to decline and the government becomes a model of democracy, no one will look to Iraq as a leader. People in the region remember -- even if the West has forgotten -- the seven years of chaos, violence, and terror. To them, this is what Iraq symbolizes. Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other failed U.S. policies in the broader Middle East, the United States has lost most of its influence on Arab people, even if it can still exert pressure on some Arab regimes.

Last week, the Western media descended upon Iraq for one last embed, for a look at the "legacy," to ask Iraqis whether it was "worth it." On the night of August 31st, I overheard one American TV producer trying to find an Iraqi family that would be watching Obama's speech on Iraq live. Obama's speech was aired at 3 a.m. in Baghdad. But Obama did not address Iraqis in his speech. And they weren't interested, anyway. Most Iraqis were awake at that hour, but they were lying in bed sweltering, unable to sleep, waiting for the electricity to come back on so they could power their air conditioners.

Published on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by Foreign Policy

Read More