Iraq Roundup

The Washington Post sees the Iraqi government falling apart:

Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a senior Shiite politician often mentioned as a potential prime minister, tendered his resignation last week in a move that reflects deepening frustration inside the Iraqi government with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Other senior Iraqi officials have considered resigning in recent weeks over the failures of their government to make progress after more than a year in power, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
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Maliki's government has failed so far to push through major laws demanded by the U.S. government as a means of promoting national reconciliation.

As the current puppets don't agree to U.S. demands, one wonders if this report is the awaited coup announcement.

But hold out on that. The Guardian reports that the problem is now solved:

Iraq's Kurdish leaders said last night they had struck an important deal with the central government in Baghdad over a law to divide up Iraq's oil revenues, which is seen by the Bush administration as one of the benchmarks in attempts to foster national reconciliation.

Ashti Hawrami, the minister for natural resources in the Kurdistan regional government, told the Guardian the text had been finalised late last night after 48 hours of "tough bargaining" with Baghdad. The deal represented "a genuine revenue sharing agreement" that was transparent and would benefit all the people of Iraq and help pull the country together, he said.

It is not immediately clear, what law Hawrami is talking about.

The draft oil law (pdf) does not say much about revenue sharing at all:

Article 11: Petroleum Revenues

A- According to the Constitution of Iraq (Articles 106, 111, 112 and 121(3)) regarding the ownership of Oil and Gas resources, the distribution of its revenues, and the monitoring of federal revenue allocation, the Council of Ministers must submit a draft federal revenue law to the Council of Representatives regulating these matters in adherence to the sections of this Article.

The oil law more or less only declares who will get the biggest chunk (87.5%) of the booty: the foreign oil companies running the business. But the part relevant in the logic of the U.S.  reconciliation propaganda, is the revenue sharing of the 12.5% the Iraqis are allowed to keep. This is in separate legislation, not within the oil law, and this may be what Hawrami is talking about.

Not that it has currently much relevance.

Live in Baghdad is getting worse each day. The insurgency attacks on the supply lines have now led to severe fuel and chlorine shortages in Baghdad. Without fuel, no generators, no electricity, no waterpumps, no water. Already some cases of cholera have appeared and this is only the start of the Iraqi summer heat.

Even the Green Zone is effected:

The water shortage has even reached inside the Green Zone, where most government offices and foreign organizations are located. Tayseer al-Mashhadani, a member of the national assembly, said the water supply there has been shut off for several hours a day.

So nice that it is often raining in the Green Zone. But unfortunatly those drops ain't water:

A series of mortars or rockets slammed into the U.S.-controlled Green Zone on Thursday, and an official said at least one round struck a parking lot used by the Iraqi prime minister and his security detail.
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A June 5 U.N. report said insurgents had bombarded the Green Zone with rockets and mortar fire more than 80 times since March, reportedly killing at least 26 people.

No wonder that the Iraqi parliamentarians are mostly outside the country. As al-Sadr followers also again boycott it, the parliament is not able to reach a quorum and to make any law - be it about oil or revenue sharing.

Then there is also this ominous paragraph in the Guardian story:

Iraq's finance minister, Bayan Jabr, and the oil minister, Hussein Sharistani, were accompanying the president, Jalal Talabani, on a state a visit to China and could not be contacted for comment.

Two points:

• How can Hawrami reach a revenue/oil deal without the finance and the oil minister and without the Iraqi president in town? Who did he deal with at all?
• What kind of back-deal are these guys making with the Chinese? What does Washington know/say about this?

Another interesting WaPo tidbit that will immensely complicate the matters for the U.S.:

The turmoil within Shiite political circles is exacerbated by the deteriorating health of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Islamic Council. He has sought treatment in Houston, and now Tehran, for lung cancer, and several U.S. and Iraqi officials said his condition is grave.

In true democratic fashion, al-Hakim's son is said to take over his role. But that may not go over easily with others in his party, guaranteeing further political turmoil.

Meanwhile Petraeus is back at whacking the mole:

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, said the military was investigating the mistaken bombing of a house in the Khatoon neighborhood of Baqubah on Wednesday. The incident occurred when soldiers decided to destroy a heavily booby-trapped residence with an aircraft bomb, but the bomb hit the wrong house, Garver said.

Idiots. Intensive bombing is not counterinsurgency, but insurgency creation.

But U.S. casualties have dropped from 4 per day in May to 3 per day in June. Did someone order Petraeus to change style from ground to air-war to avoid casualties?

As Anthony Cordesman notes in his latest analysis:

More honesty, objective self-criticism, serious effort to develop credible strategies and operational plans might well have prevented all of Iraq’s current civil conflicts and problems from reaching anything like their current scale. In fact, if the US loses in Iraq – as seems all too possible – its primary enemy will not have been Al Qa’ida, but the US government.

This is right in a way, but it is incomplete too as it misses any mentioning of genuine national resistance to the colonial attempt on Iraq. There was likely never a chance to win to begin with.

Posted by b on June 21, 2007 at 12:01 UTC | Permalink

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