Empire Notes

April 7, 11:20 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- A major atrocity is unfolding in Fallujah and Ramadi. Everyone tells us that the towns are cordoned off, with electricity and water cut and no supplies allowed in. A mosque in Fallujah was just destroyed, with 40 dead. The total dead in fighting for the two towns is 30 American soldiers and over 150 Iraqis -- probably far over, given the difficulties of counting. A fitting response to the killing of the four Blackwater Security mercenaries. Of course, if the condition of siege continues much longer, the death toll even among noncombatants in Fallujah and Ramadi will skyrocket.

As we were driving back from Kadhimiyah (a Shi'a district), we passed through Aadhamiyah. In front of the Abu Hanifa mosque (the same area where Saddam was shown walking around last April 9 -- Aadhamiyah is still a Saddamist stronghold), we noticed a major traffic snarl and hundreds of people milling around.

It was a massive volunteer relief effort for Fallujah and Ramadi. Coordinated from mosques around the city, which told people to go to Abu Hanifa if they wanted to give for Falluja and Ramadi, the hours-old effort had already collected five truckloads of food and supplies, as well as substantial amounts of money. They were bringing staple foods -- flour, potatoes, dates, oil -- and also a staggering number of burial shrouds.

Even more remarkable, doctors from Baghdad's central blood bank (located in Aadhamiyah) had come to the mosque and literally thousands of people lined up to donate blood. The doctors had only 500 blood bags and it was a mob scene as people fought to be the ones to give blood. One man told me he had had a heart attack but he was still going to give blood.

The anger that came through when people spoke to me as palpable -- I could literally feel it on my skin as people yelled in my face so fast that I had no hope of keeping up as I took notes. Women in hijab yelled at me that they would go and fight in Fallujah. Even so, people were kind and helpful -- a civil engineer who spoke good English actually took me around and translated for me, and several people pointed out to me that money was falling out of my pockets.

Although the relief was going to the Sunni areas of Fallujah and Ramadi (and Aadhamiyah is overwhelmingly Sunni), many people made a point of saying that if Kufa or Najaf, Shi'a towns, were under siege they would give for them too (Kufa is Moqtada's stronghold). One woman who gave her name only as Umm Saif (mother of Saif), said, "We are all united against the Americans."

Well, Bush is proving himself as a uniter, not a divider. If the siege is not lifted soon, however, the people of Fallujah and Ramadi will pay a heavy price for that.

April 7, 10:08 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I'm still getting used to this business of reporting the news instead of knowing it. That paradox for foreign journalists covering any kind of situation is that often they are the people who know the least about what's going on. Not speaking Arabic, I can't turn on the TV or radio at all hours of the night, and I'm limited to the few hours a day I can snatch in an Internet cafe.

Even so, there's a lot I've found to report. It goes on the blog first, then everywhere else.

Over the past two days, we've visited the al-Sadr people in three districts of Baghdad -- Sadr City (Thawra), Shuala, and Kadhimiyah. We talked with a variety of people of different ranks -- al-Sadr's people are thoroughly jaded when it comes to journalists, and, of course, unimpressed by mere print media. Anyway, I've put together some impressions.

Let me start by saying that the Sadrists are certainly extremists. They believe in Khomeini's Vilayet al-Faqih -- Islamic theocracy. They shout "Death to America" and "Death to the Jews." Still, despite extreme provocation, they all say that they have orders not to fight back, even as the U.S. forces attack peaceful demonstrations and wreak havoc in firefights across half of Iraq. They maintain, in fact, that those who shoot back at the occupying forcess are not from their Mehdi Army but simply people from the areas -- certainly a plausible claim, although impossible to verify.

They are definitely organizing -- when we were in Thawra, the headquarters was alive with planning, mostly done in whispers when we were near. It's pretty clear, though, that the plans are defensive. They expect many more rounds of American attacks, and they want to be prepared. None of them seems to think they have the wherewithal to attack.

Moqtada al-Sadr is a very young man -- often reported as 30, but he may be as young as his early 20's. He obviously had no time to advance far in the Shi'a clerical hierarchy, which requires much study and learning and, for the higher levels, demonstrated skill in interpretation of Islamic law. By rights, he should not be a player.

He's drawing his support from two starkly different pools. This was dramatically illustrated when we went to his madrassa in Kadhimiyah. We spoke there with the head imam at the Musa al-Kadhim mosque (this was attacked on Ashura, with about 60 dead), Hazem al-Arajy. He was forced to flee Iraq in 1999, when Moqtada al-Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr was killed by Saddam. He lived in Vancouver until two months ago, when he persuaded by the people of Kadhimiayah to return.

I asked him why he, a senior cleric, would follow a young man like Moqtada. He said, "Moqtada and I are both following Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr." Questioned further, he went on to say that in every area there was a different authority speaking for Sadiq al-Sadr; in Kadhimiyah, it was he.

While we were talking, in the background, young men who had just finished prayers were chanting forcefully, "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada, Yallah, Ya Mohammed, Ya Ali, Ya Mehdi."

Ya is the Arabic vocative construction, used when addressing someone. Allah is God, Mohammed is the last prophet, Ali was the fourth caliph, but is regarded by the Shi'a as the legitimate successor of Mohammed (unlike the first three), and is the founder of Shi'ism. The Mehdi (or Mahdi) in Shi'a belief is the Twelfth Imam, who went into hiding in 874 AD and will come back to lead them to glory. I don't somehow think that the people juxtaposing Moqtada with all of the above would agree that he was just one of many spokespeople for the dead Grand Ayatollah.

Many of the more "respectable" people follow or align with Moqtada because of their respect for his father -- who was not only one of the marja'iya ("sources of emulation") but was also a native Iraqi, unlike Sistani.

At the same time, there is the "sanctions generation" -- kids who grew up under U.S.-imposed deprivation in a society going into an inexorable decay. A young man of 18 today would have been 4 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. He has known only malnutrition in his youth, decay of an educational and health care system, possibly illiteracy (Iraq was the only country in the world where the literacy rate decreased during the 1990's). As Denis Halliday, former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, warned years ago, these young men were fodder for any extremist ideology, most naturally of course for Islamic extremism.

Those young men are the shock troops of Moqtada al-Sadr. Some of them may even see him as the Mehdi. They are also, as with so many of the enemies the United States now faces, a creation of the United States.

April 7, 3:30 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've just posted a new article -- "Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell." We're off to Kadhimiya now.

April 6, 1:00 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- When you read this post, please refer to this partial timeline of recent events (I've added to it since yesterday) and to this background on the Shi'a.

The United States has opened the gates of hell. First, it picked another fight with Fallujah. The grisly incident in which the charred corpses of four U.S. mercenaries were dragged through town and (some of them) hung from a bridge was a reaction to a raid on March 26, in which the United States killed at least 7 Iraqi civilians. The U.S. response of putting a military cordon around the town and planning a major operation will, of course, turn the entire population of Fallujah against them, if they hadn't already been turned against them by the numerous massacres of civilians already committed in Fallujah.

But antagonizing the Sunni Arabs who have been the heart of the military resistance to the occupation was not enough for the CPA. For some reason known only to them, they decided to pick a fight with the Shi'a as well, in particular with Moqtada al-Sadr, a fierce opponent of the occupation with an armed militia of 10,000 (the Mahdi Army).

Although al-Sadr opposes the occupation, he had been clearly avoiding violent resistance. Then, on March 28, came the CPA's closure of his newspaper, al-Hawza. Why the CPA closed it is unclear; certainly it was a phenomenally stupid move, in addition to being undemocratic. The paper's circulation was only 10,000, mostly Sadrists. Sadr supporters organized numerous demonstrations. The CPA did further raids on Sadr's offices, arresting some of his aides.

Then on Sunday, things turned very violent, starting with an incident in Najaf where occupying forces fired (provoked either by gunfire or stone-throwing) on Sadr supporters, killing at least 14 (four soldiers were killed as well). Sadr's Mahdi Army (Mahdi is a term that refers to the Hidden Imam, the 12th Imam, who went into hiding in 874 AD and is expected to return to save the Shi'a) then was involved in numerous clashes with U.S. forces. In the past couple of days, well over 60 Iraqis and at least 12 U.S. soldiers have been killed.

Bremer declared Sadr an outlaw and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Thawra, a slum of 2 million mostly Shi'a in Baghdad, and a stronghold of Sadr's, was cordoned off while U.S. forces made reprisal raids, using Apache helicopters in residential areas. As with Falluja, presumably anyone in Thawra who wasn't a supporter of Sadr will be after this.

Sadr took sanctuary in his mosque in Kufa, his base. He left his followers with these words:

Make your enemy afraid, for it is impossible to remain quiet about their moral offenses; otherwise we have arrived at consequences that will not be praiseworthy. I am with you, and shall not forsake you to face hardships alone. I fear for you, for no benefit will come from demonstrations. Your enemy loves terrorism, and despises peoples, and all Arabs, and muzzles opinions. I beg you not to resort to demonstrations, for they have become nothing but burned paper. It is necessary to resort to other measures, which you take in your own provinces. As for me, I am with you, and I hope I will be able to join you and then we shall ascend into exalted heavens. I will go into an inviolable retreat in Kufa. Help me by whatever you are pleased to do in your provinces.

Since the United States doesn't care about the popular will, as evinced by demonsrations, the Shi'a must resort to "other measures." This is a not-so-veiled call for violent resistance of some kind. And, of course, over 60 demonstrators were killed as well.

BTW, when Sadr says he will "go into an inviolable retreat," this seems pretty clearly to be a reference to one of the central Shi'a beliefs: the Twelfth Imam, persecuted by the caliphate, went into hiding in 874 AD, and will emerge at the right time to lead the Shi'a to triumph. Making even a loose parallel between yourself and the Hidden Imam is a way to assert your standing among the Shi'a.

To use military terminology, right now in Iraq things are probably at Defcon 3. They don't reach Defcon 1 unless Sistani weighs in with a call for violent resistance. This is unlikely in the extreme, but the dynamic that has been unleashed is such that he is forced to lend some degree of support to Sadr. Sistani's spokesman said that Sistani called on demonstrators not to retaliate against occupying forces even if they face aggression, but said that Sistani believes "the demonstrators’ demands are legitimate," and "condemns acts waged by the occupation forces and pledges his support to the families of the victims."

This occupation's combination of brutality and fecklessness shows itself in the boldest relief once again. With Shi'a and Sunni erupting, the only response it can think of is military measures -- even though it was the same kind of measures that got it into this mess. Bush's saying that Sadr and his followers are fighting because they don't want to "allow democracy to flourish" is simply absurd and inflammatory -- everybody here understands that closing down a newspaper is an anti-democratic act. Especially since the likely reasons are either that the paper compared Bremer with Saddam or that it expressed solidarity with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Even if this upsurge is contained, it's likely that this will be viewed in the future as a turning point in the occupation.

April 6, 1:00 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Some background on the Shi'a and the two most politically prominent leaders, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr.

Until recently, Shi'a participation in attacks on the U.S. military had been minimal. For the most part, they hated Saddam just as much as the Kurds, after the gruesome massacres with which he put down the 1991 uprising (with the support of the United States). Also, as the majority, they have expected to get a better political deal,  whatever transpires, than they did under Saddam.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest religious leader of the Shi'a in Iraq (leader of the four Grand Ayatollahs based in Najaf, a holy city and center of Shi'a learning), has never preached violence against the United States. On key issues, like the U.S. plan to substitute a complicated and undemocratic system of regional caucuses for the creation of an elected body that would draft the new Iraqi constitution, he has resisted, sometimes even calling massive demonstrations (the biggest involving 100,000 in Baghdad). Sistani is of the "quietist" school of Islamic jurisprudence, which dictates that clerics not directly involve themselves in politics.

The other major Shi'a figure to be reckoned with is Moqtada al-Sadr. His father and uncle were both ayatollahs who were murdered by Saddam Hussein. He himself holds minimal religious rank and commands nowhere near the authority of Sistani. Al-Sadr has defined himself in opposition to Sistani in several ways. Most basic, he is Iraqi and Sistani is of Iranian origin. Second, according to Juan Cole, writing in the Middle East Journal, Sadr is a believer in Khomeini's theocratic "Vilayat i-Faqih" (Rule of the Just Islamic Jurist) political philosophy. Third, Sadr came out early and very forcefully against the occupation, instead of simply arguing over the details as has Sistani. Under intense pressure, he had very carefully calibrated his view on violent resistance: it's not called for now, but we will remain prepared for the day when it is.

April 5, 12:05 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Having trouble getting my head around everything that's happened recently. Undoubtedly among the most significant happenings yet and a potential turning point in the occupation.

As a start, below is a timeline of relevant events. While reading, remember there are two entirely separate threads: the attacks and reprisals in Falluja and the attacks and reprisals with Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in numerous locations. In each one, it looks like the U.S. forces precipitated the clashes (in terms of the proximate cause; above and beyond that is the basic background context of the occupation).

Timeline:

• March 26 Running battles in Falluja in which U.S. Marines kill an Iraqi cameraman and at least six other civilians. At least 15 total dead, including one U.S. Marine.
• March 28 Al-Hawza, newspaper associated with firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, closed. Its circulation is estimated at 10,000.
• March 31 Killing of 4 Blackwater Security mercenaries (and 5 soldiers) and dragging and hanging of corpses in Falluja. Bremer and Kimmitt vow retaliation.
• April 3 Thousands of members of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army march in Thawra (Sadr City), a sprawling slum of 2 million in Baghdad. There have been protests ever since the closing of al-Hawza.
• April 3. U.S. forces arrest Mustafa al-Yacoub, a key aide of al-Sadr and head of his Najaf office, for possible involvement in the murder of Shi'a cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei in April 2003.
• April 4. Four Salvadorean soldiers and 14 protesters are killed near the outpost of the Spanish-language “Plus Ultra” garrison at Najaf. Reports are conflicting. Some say gunmen from the crowd opened fire; others say the crowd threw rocks and drew fire in response. Either account seems plausible.
• April 4. U.S. forces storm al-Sadr's Baghdad headquarters, killing two.
• April 4, 5:00 pm-midnight. Clashes between members of the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military in Thawra. Seven U.S. soldiers and a variously estimated 22 or 28 Iraqis killed. Sadrists occupy three police stations in Thawra.
  
• April 4 al-Sadr’s militants seize the police headquarters and other government buildings in Kufa, his stronghold.
• April 5. U.S. forces block off access to Falluja in preparation for a major military operation. At least 1200 Marines are involved, as well as Iraqi security forces.
  
• April 5 L. Paul Bremer III calls al-Sadr an “outlaw” and a warrant for his arrest is issued.
• April 5. Al-Sadr supporters occupy the governor’s office in Basra.
• April 5. U.S. forces attack Shiite slums in Baghdad (al-Thawra and al-Shuala) with Apache helicopters and with tanks with reports of five killed. They also open fire on stone-throwing militants mourning the dead of Sunday. Thawra and other hot areas in Baghdad are cordoned off.
• April 5. Moqtada al-Sadr goes into retreat in a mosque in Kufa.

I'm being run out of the Internet cafe. People go home early these days. More later.

April 5, 11:05 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Just arrived into Baghdad a few hours ago. The trip was a little hairy. At a couple of points, our driver had to maneuver hard to keep from being stopped by the thieves that frequent the western highway in from Amman. On our way, we were forced to detour because the occupying forces had put a military cordon around Falluja, in preparation for serious military operations.

A tremendous amount happened while I was flying into Amman and on the road. All hell is breaking loose in Iraq, as most of you already know.  Paradoxically, when you're in Iraq, you often have to go and surf the Internet to find out what's happening. I'll post something up shortly.

April 4, 11:15 am EST. Very serious incident in Najaf, the center of the Shi'a clergy in Iraq and primary place of pilgrimage, along with Kerbala. A demonstration by al-Sadr's followers, during which, apparently, Iraqi gunmen opened fire on the Spanish garrison, who then returned fire. 14 Iraqis killed, four Salvadorean soldiers.

This is huge. An incident just like this, except that there it was the U.S. soldiers who fired first, in Falluja on April 28, set off the round of violence that has subjected Falluja to so much repression ever since and made it into a hotbed of resistance. It will be harder for that to happen in Najaf, because of Sistani's influence, but it is certainly possible.

Sistani will have to react to this very carefully in order to keep al-Sadr's popularity from growing too much.

April 4, 11:00 am EST. Just noticed this. On April 1, BBC reports that the U.N. was forced to halt food aid to Gaza. Israel suspended shipment of 11,000 tons of food because of concerns that suicide bombers might hide in the shipping containers. At least 600,000 people in Gaza could be seriously affected. In fact, according to the Bertini report of August 2002, 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories were dependent on direct food aid, and things have only gotten worse.

I suppose suicide bombers could hide in shipping containers, although I'm a bit confused, because this food is supposed to go into Gaza, not come out of it. In any case, those concerns are, to say the least, hardly sufficient to imperil 600,000 people. The article notes that the U.N. Relief and Works Association has cut deliveries from 60% of what was necessary to 40%, and no longer distributes such staples as rice, flour, and cooking oil in Gaza. Dependence on aid has skyrocketed in the last three and a half years because of the "closures," and the UNRWA suddenly finds itself underfunded.

Peter Hansen, chief of UNRWA, says, "If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations," an odd statement, considering that the same Bertini report said that 22.5% of children under the age of 5 suffered from either acute or chronic malnourishment. A report by Jean Ziegler, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right of Access to Food, that came out last summer, said that 50% of people in the occupied territories make do on one meal a day. I wonder what is the threshold for hunger to be "real" -- must be awfully high.

Thanks to blogger Justin Podur of The Killing Train for pointing this article out.

April 4, 9:45 am EST. Re my earlier post about the Clarke poll -- 65% of those polled saying Clarke's testimony had not changed their opinion of Bush -- M.K. from North Carolina says, "The question on the Newsweek Poll about Clarke's changing one's opinion of Bush was a bad one. Nothing could make my opinion of Bush worse than it already is. It's as low as an opinion could be."

A good point. With most presidents, you would think the number of people who would say something like that was small enough that poll results wouldn't change dramatically. With Bush, it's a different matter.

April 4, 9:30 am EST. A post from Schiphol, where for a mere 10 euros you can get 24 hours of wireless access. Several days ago, Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and coiner of the term, "soft power," reprised the notion in an op-ed in the Post titled "A Dollop of Deeper American Values: Why 'Soft Power' Matters in Fighting Terrorism."

As he defines it in the piece, "Soft power is the ability to get what we want by attracting others rather than by threatening or paying them." More particularly, it seems to be the ability to get what "we" want without bombing anyone, threatening very aggressively to bomb them (mild threats are, of course, soft power), and possibly without kidnapping them in the wee hours of the morning (I'm not sure about this).

Certainly, most, if not all, of the horrors of U.S. control through instruments like the World Bank and the IMF are included under the rubric of soft power. As, of course, are influence through movies, prized American brand names, manipulating news reporting, and broadcasting Voice of America (al-Hurra, the new American Arabic-language satellite TV network, is more an example of soft-headedness -- you don't get very far by broadcasting reruns of old moview when every other network in the Arab world is broadcasting reports of 200,000 people in Gaza gathered for Ahmed Yassin's funeral).

Anyway, Nye has been one of the prime movers in what has now emerged as the conventional wisdom of the liberal foreign policy establishment -- and, frankly, of any establishment figure who's not a raving neoconservative or a raving idiot.  Here's how Nye says it:

The war on terrorism is not a clash of civilizations -- Islam vs. the West -- but rather a civil war within Islamic civilization between extremists who use violence to enforce their vision and a moderate majority who want such things as jobs, education, health care and dignity as they practice their faith. We will not win unless the moderates win. Our soft power will never attract Osama bin Laden and the extremists. We need hard power to deal with them. But soft power will play a crucial role in our ability to attract the moderates and deny the extremists new recruits.

In other words, roughly, we have to take the responsibility for creating in the region governments, organizations, and institutions that serve our interests, but we won't succeed unless we realize that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar (and simultaneously that you can't just crush all the flies in your mailed fist). He concludes by lamenting the administration's misplaced priorities:

With the end of the Cold War, Americans became more interested in budget savings than in investing in our soft power. Even after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a bipartisan advisory group reported that the United States spent a paltry $150 million on public diplomacy in Muslim countries in 2002. The combined cost of the State Department's public diplomacy programs and all our international broadcasting that year was just over a billion dollars -- about the same amount spent by Britain or France, countries one-fifth our size. It is also equal to one-quarter of 1 percent of the military budget. No one would suggest that we spend as much to launch ideas as to launch bombs, but it does seem odd that we spend 400 times as much on hard power as on soft power. If we spent just 1 percent of the military budget, it would mean quadrupling our spending on soft power.

If the United States is going to win the struggle against terrorism, our leaders are going to have to learn to better combine soft and hard power into "smart power," as we did in the Cold War. We have done it before; we can do it again.

Let's consider this just from the point of view of dealing with the threat posed by Islamic terrorism to the West -- i.e., leaving aside considerations of its far greater threat to people in the Muslim world, or of dealing with global injustice, or of allowing real self-determination in the Third World, or anything else.

It's very clear that ramping up the soft power component of U.S. dealings with the Muslim world (and, to some extent, the rest of the Third World) would help, would be a definite improvement over the cretinous hard power of the Bush administration, as exemplified in the brutally stupid occupation of Iraq.

In the past, this has made a critical difference. After World War 2, most people (perhaps with the exception of Latin Americans) did not see the United States as imperialist. In the 1930's, the Saudis were very clear that they wanted to give their oil concession to American companies, because they feared and distrusted the British colonialists. In fact, it's taken an enormous amount of effort by the United States to make it sink even lower in Arab eyes than Britain, and almost as low, for many, as Israel.

At this point, I think too much water has passed under the bridge. U.S. support for Israel in the latest phase of the occupation (which started in September 2000 and is usually known as the al-Aqsa intifada -- a misnomer, because it is the Israelis who started the process and drove it, not the Palestinians, as with the first intifada) started to tip things over -- aided by the inauguration of al-Jazeera, which constantly beams these images into the households of the Arab world. The division of the world by the invasion of Iraq, and even more the callousness and brutality of the occupation have taken this a step further.

It's impossible to know for sure, but I think that we may well find that to deal with this particular threat requires the evolution of a new concept, entirely foreign to American foreign policy in the postwar era -- not hard power, not soft power, but engagement without trying to influence or control. So deeply are imperial hard and soft power intertwined in every American institution and way of doing business that it will be hard even to figure out what this concept would mean.

April 3, 2:10 pm EST. I'm off to the airport. I'll be in Iraq until April 25. Mostly in Baghdad; I'll have to figure out when I get there whether visiting other places is worth the risk. Internet access is difficult except through cafes, but expect to see daily notes about life in Iraq, as well as other commentary of the kind you've been seeing. Inshallah. The next post will probably be from Amsterdam's lovely Schiphol International Airport.

A thought for the road. A Newsweek poll conducted on Thursday and Friday. 65% of those polled said Clarke's testimony has not affected their views of Bush, 17% that it made them view him less favorably and, believe it or not, 10% say that is made them view him more favorably.

Words fail me -- for now.

April 3, 1:14 pm EST. Globalsecurity.org underestimated it. Turns out there are U.S. troops in 135 countries (not including the U.S.). Here's a document that spells out active duty personnel numbers by service, region, and country. Thanks to a reader for the tip.

April 3, 11:50 am EST. Thousands of protesters marched in Baghdad to protest the closing of the Moqtada al-Sadr-affiliated newspaper al-Hawza. In a speech at the protest, al-Sadr declared his solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas and warned the Kurds not to cooperate with the occupation.

Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is estimated at 6-10,000 people, and, several weeks ago, destroyed the small hamlet of Qawliya (about 150 homes). Most of the town's residents were Gypsies and it was also known for its red-light district.

Al-Sadr, unlike Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is a believer in theocracy, in particular in Khomeini's concept of Vilayat-i-Faqih (Rule of the Just Jurist). He attracts support away from al-Sistani for two reasons: he's Iraqi (al-Sistani is originally from Iran) and he's militantly opposed to the occupation.

This is yet another way in which the occupation leads to more extremism and internecine violence. Which some people then say shows that the occupation must continue. What Iraq needs if it is to survive is to reverse that logic and start moving towards a polity that will decrease those tensions, not exacerbate them as the United States is doing.

April 3, 11:30 am EST. Here's a little piece in the Times Sunday Magazine by my favorite scribe of imperialism and yours, Niall Ferguson. In addition to being a phenomenal supercilious twit (I had the dubious pleasure of debating him last year), he is so over the top that he does apologetics not only for modern-day U.S. imperialism but for British colonialism.
 
In the piece, called "The Way We Live Now: Eurabia," he laments the fact that Europe, with its free and tolerant society, is being taken over by Muslim fanatics. Notwithstanding his supposed inclination toward free societies, he even resurrects that favorite lament of blood-and-soil nationalists everywhere -- Europeans have a low birth rate and, of course, Muslims in countries near Europe have a high one.

Need anything more be said?Letters to letters@nytimes.com.

April 2, 8:22 pm EST. The Associated Press reports that the U.S.-France puppet regime in Haiti plans to seek extradition of Aristide to face trial for extradition and human rights violations. Gerard Latortue claims that Aristide may have misappropriated $1 billion in government funds.

This sounds like nonsense just by virtue of the scale of the claims, if nothing else. Even as a propaganda ploy, it seems like a bad idea for them. If you want to try him in camera in the Central African Republic, fine, but trying him in Haiti would catalyze public resistance to this illegitimate new regime and possibly lead to a loss of control. A government that found Aristide's presence in Jamaica to be a threat should not be so sanguine about the prospect of Aristide in Haiti.

This call doesn't seem to be getting a lot of play in the newspapers and I wonder if this is Latortue and company striking out on their own. The Bush administration, in particular, has shown no great eagerness to bring anyone to trial.

Aristide has also filed suit in Paris for kidnap. The defendant named is "X."

April 2, 5:32 pm EST. Here's a good link for figuring out where our legions are posted around the world -- in nearly 130 countries.

April 2, 2:47 pm EST. Check out the New York Times editorial on Fallujah. In the best tradition of unclear-on-the-concept colonialism:

What the horrific images from Falluja should convey is that the fundamental problem is in Iraq itself. ...

Led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite majority, persecuted for decades, insists on a version of democracy that enshrines Shiite domination and fails to offer needed protections for minority groups. This is clearly unacceptable to the Sunni minority in places like Falluja, and to the Kurds.

So, the mob yelling "CIA" and "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans" were angry because of potential Shi'a domination, not because of the scores of civilians killed by American military operations there (it's also worth remembering that one of the big civilian kills of the Gulf War was when a bomb fell in a marketplace in Falluja).

Don't get me wrong. Of course, Sunni Arabs in Iraq feel particularly dispossessed and angry at losing their dominant political role. But that doesn't generally lead to violence against Americans. Killing civilians, home raids, flagrantly unjust detentions, creating mass unemployment, disbanding the army -- those are the sources of armed resistance. In Falluja it's particularly simple; the U.S. military has angered the whole population with its brutality.

By the way, as this AFP report says, Falluja was not a Saddam stronghold. It was, in fact, a town of Sunni tribes that resisted domination by the central government and, according to the story, "Under Saddam, imams across the town refused to abide by his orders to praise him personally during daily prayers." In addition, there was a significant Salafist (extreme fundamentalist -- Wahhabism is a subset of Salfism) presence in Falluja, and Saddam heavily repressed anyone even vaguely suspected of Salafism.

The Times concludes with some wonderful critical reflection, calling on Iraqis to shoulder their responsibility of making their occupation by a foreign power work:

No one - not Americans, Europeans or the U.N. - can impose a pluralistic democracy at gunpoint and make it stick. That can happen only if enough influential Iraqis from all three communities embrace a workable constitution and defend it against its many armed enemies.

The word "occupation" does not appear in the editorial at all. We just know by divine revelation that all the armed attacks are attacks against the constitution, not against the occupation. We're trying to help some benighted natives build democracy, they have internecine squabbles, and we're not being sufficiently bold about making the natives realize that we can't do it for them while they laze around -- they have to help themselves. This could have been lifted out of a British editorial about Iraq in 1920. If anyone has any such lying around, send them my way.

April 1, 9:10 pm EST. Amazingly enough, there's an op-ed in the LA Times by two "right-wing media veterans" whose analysis of Air America's prospects is the same as mine, and focuses on the fact that it seems to be about getting Kerry elected rather than building a movement.

The right wing knows how to build movements. Liberals are not even sure they want to. And the left is still marginal.

Thanks to Political Animal for pointing out the article in his blog.

April 1, 4:05 pm EST. More on Falluja. The four contractors who were killed and dragged through the streets were described in initial reports as civilians. In fact, they were employees of Blackwater Security, which, as its website says, "has its roots in the Special Operations Community." According to this Mother Jones article from last year, in addition to providing "security," they do counterterrorism trainings for the U.S. military. Ex-Special forces guys in Falluja to consult on security and counterterrorism -- not exactly civilians. And, in fact, later reports have stopped using the word "civilian."

An article in the LA Times, in fact, quotes one bystander as saying, "people were saying they were CIA," which is not exactly far off the mark. It quotes another Fallujah resident saying that the attacks were retaliation for the attacks of last Friday, in which, according to Reuters, U.S. Marines killed at least seven Iraqi civilians, including a cameraman working for ABC (has any other country even come close to killing as many journalists this year as the United States?) and, according to at least one eyewitness report, the Marines started firing without provocation.

The attitude in Fallujah seems pretty clear -- "if you come in here and kill civilians, we'll do our best to kill you."

Bremer has vowed that the culprits will not escape punishment and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said these chilling words:

We will be back in Fallouja. It will be at the time and the place of our choosing. We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them or we will capture them. And we will pacify Fallouja.

Since it was a cross-section of the people of Falluja, and not some specific organization, that killed these four, this clearly means collective reprisals against the whole town -- and, of course, this is going to lead to the same result that all the earlier atrocities and collective punishments in Falluja have led to -- starting with the killings in late April of 2003.

The attitudes I saw on my previous trip to Iraq (especially in Adhamiyah, the Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad that is described as the center of resistance in the capital) were very clear -- total opposition to American troops and those who are part of the occupation, but no particular desire to commit violence against others who happen to be foreign.

For example, we talked with a woman whose son had been killed by U.S. forces. There was a demonstration in Adhamiyah when Saddam was captured. He wasn't part of it, she had just sent him to tell his father to close the shop and come home because she was worried, and he got shot and killed on his way. She couldn't tell the story without breaking down every few minutes, but she made a point of telling us that we were welcome, that they had nothing against Americans, but that the occupying forces were not welcome.

Obviously, there are some groups in Iraq who are indiscriminately killing foreigners and Iraqi civilians. To the best of my understanding (which is very limited, because there don't seem to be resistance groups that make their politics known or that put out statements condemning attacks like the Ashura attacks or those on women who clean or do laundry for the CPA), there are also groups that focus just on resisting the military occupation.

April 1, 2:40 pm EST. Some readers ask what names was I referring to, a propos of the liberal talk radio network Air America being named after a CIA operation.

Well, Jim Hightower inaugurated in 2000 a traveling big-tent fun for the whole family celebrity-filled political Lollapalooza-type event and called it "Rolling Thunder," named after the bombing campaign Lyndon Johnson inaugurated a few months after being elected president. And Bill Clinton called the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (a regime-change trial balloon) "Desert Fox," which was the nickname of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

And, yes, much as I detest all three of these names, Bush's "Infinite Justice," (which had to be shelved because of opposition) was infinitely worse.

April 1, 9:10 am EST. Kerry recently used the opportunity of higher gas prices to make himself look foolish. He is calling for the administration to put pressure on OPEC countries to produce more and bring the price down, while simultaneously touting his interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil -- something that higher gas prices would do (and don't forget that we have far lower gas prices than most of the First World). And has Kerry the environmentalist forgotten that we contribute about five times our share of world carbon emissions?

Cheney correctly ridiculed Kerry for his ridiculous flip-flop on this issue, saying "After voting three times to increase the gas tax and once proposing to increase it by 50 cents a gallon, he now says he doesn't support it."

Best of all, Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter says, according to the Post, that "Kerry will use his new proposal to fault Bush for not applying adequate diplomatic pressure on oil-producing nations during his administration." Inadequate diplomatic pressure? If an attempted coup in Venezuela and a war on and occupation of Iraq are not adequate, what stronger measures is Kerry angling for?

April 1, 9:00 am EST. Score one more for the rogue state. The International Court of Justice just ruled that 51 Mexicans on death row in the United States were illegally deprived of their right of consular assistance, guaranteed under the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, and said their cases should be reviewed and reconsidered.

It's interesting that the U.S. bothered to argue the case in the ICJ, because ever since 1986 it has denied that it recognizes the court's authority.

April 1, 8:00 am EST. The much-touted liberal talk radio network, Air America, debuted yesterday. I caught a little bit of Al Franken fawning over Bob Kerrey the war criminal, but the streaming audio feed wasn't working very well.

Howard Kurtz does a hatchet job on it in the Post. The article goes into great detail in showing the nasty, divisive rhetoric hosts are using. And it is harsh stuff, although I can't imagine Kurtz seriously expects us to recoil in horror at depictions of Ann Coulter as a "borderline racist."

Harsh as it is, though, what's amazing is that normal conservative talk radio, anywhere in the country at any time, is about ten times as virulent but it basically occasions no comment. As well as being less justified.

Al Franken is the main attraction for Air America right now. And he clearly has the wrong vision for the network. An article on him in the Times Sunday Magazine (March 21) said,

Though he says he is interested in sticking around, Franken has reportedly signed only a one-year contract. "I'm doing this because I want to use my energies to get Bush unelected," he told me. "I'd be happy if the election of a Democrat ended the show."

Beating Bush is a fine and good goal (especially for a political middle-of-the-roader like Franken, who, according to the Times, thinks the DLC is a "moral force for good"), but if the people who launched conservative talk radio had had such a blinkered vision 25 years ago, the country would be in a lot better shape than it is.

This is an important experiment and it is to be hoped that someone involved has a longer-term strategy. It would also be nice if the network has the courage to bring on guests who will talk about the occupation of Iraq and the coup in Haiti, and who might even criticize John Kerry

And, oh yeah, why oh why did they have to name it after a CIA operation supporting the Vietnam War (and doing a little drug smuggling on the side)? Reminds me of my peeve when Jim Hightower named his neo-Chatauqua tour after Lyndon Johnson's major bombing campaign targeting North Vietnam. At least they're a step up from Clinton naming his bombing campaign against Iraq after a Nazi field marshal.