Have You Ever Seen A Turbaned Man With A Tie!

Jawad al-Maliki, or Nouri Kamil al-Ali (which is the new name he chose for himself now) has become Iraq’s first long-term Prime Minister after the invasion in 2003. The Iraqis received the news in different ways, all show how frustrated they are.

Maliki is a senior member of the Islamic Dawa Party, which is a party headed by former PM Ibrahim al-Jafari and was based in neighboring Iran when Saddam Hussien ruled Iraq. His political background is vague. I heard, as the Iraqis did, that he was born in 1950, studied in Iraq and received a Master degree in Arabic language from Baghdad University. He left Iraq, some say in 1968 and others say in 1980, and lived in Syria. His background pauses at the time he fled the country, but continues in 2003 when he came back to Iraq. We all knew him as Jawad al-Maliki since then, but the night he was nominated by the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiites largets parliamentary group, we heard that his real name is Nouri Kamil al-Ali. He was nominated by this name, not Jawad al-Maliki. And of course, with the mess that preceded the PM’s name announcement and the violence that’s erupting the country every minute, Iraqis were too tired to ask what was the reason behind the two names and which one is the true one and why there are two. We will wait for a while and then rumors will start to flow.

He is number two in Dawa Party. He also was a senior member and a decision-maker in the Debaathification committee that was formed after the invasion to make sure that “senior” members of Saddam Hussein’s party don’t infiltrate into the high-ranking government offices. I talked to the guy before, in person. He is one of the nicest politicians I’ve ever met, and also one of the most sectarian ones. But in the new government, to be sectarian is all what you need to get a job!

Have you noticed that Iraq’s new government doesn’t include any secular figures? Have we noticed that the “National Unity Government” has decided that the secular politicians of Iraq are not considered Iraqis? And no matter what the seculars get in the next step, they weren’t counted in the basic formula, which means that I was right when I said that politics in Iraq is all about the sect and ethnic background and only a way to reward those who “suffered” from Saddam Hussein’s government (not suffered under it, because they were “suffering” in exile.)

The Iraqis differ on how they reacted to the decision of making Maliki a PM. Some thought it was a “great news that would solve all the problems in Iraq.” Others said that “he is a tough man who would end three years of violence.” Some said “he is a Shiite. That is enough. Because the Shiites have to rule Iraq from now on.” And many said “why should we care? They don’t care about us, and we care no more.”

The reality from the ground is that Jawad al-Maliki is a Dawa member, therefore, he is a member of the United Iraqi Alliance. And that means he has to follow the alliance’s platform. Do you know that the alliance forces the PM to sign his resignation before he formally gets the post? Yes it does. This is a condition to get the post. The alliance wants to make sure that the PM will follow the orders and when not, the resignation will be submitted to the parliament. Now start breathing again people, don’t hold your breath. Well, this is the Iraqi democracy. What were you thinking?

Ibrahim al-Jafari, who was widely discredited for being “sectarian and failing to unite the country under one flag, which should be the Iraqi flag. And because thousands of Iraqis were killed in organized ethnic-based assassinations since Jafari was seated.” But was it Jafari who did that?

Jafari was nominated by the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiites largest and most biased, sectarian, and revenge-seeking group in Iraq today. This alliance has a platform and has an agenda. Do we really believe that this alliance would nominate Jafari and as him to lead the country without following the orders? Why would we believe that? Why would the alliance choose a candidate the wouldn’t fulfill what the Mullas wasn’t?

Jafari followed the alliance’s path to the bone. He was only a marionette, like others, and the string was attached to the alliance itself. As simple as this. Therefore, and after this brief in Iraqi politics, which you wouldn’t find in newspapers or TV stations, I hope you now know that nothing has changed. I got emails form readers and friends congratulating me for the new and optimistic step Iraq has achieved by nominating a “new PM.” But he is not new. The name might not ring a bell to some of you. But doesn’t the name United Iraqi Alliance ring one? Doesn’t the name Abdul Aziz al-Hakim?

This is a two-part entry I wanted to write to try to memorize the last three years of political marathon in Iraq.

Part Two: The Same Faces Always!

So, as we said before, Jafari was four months late to form his government. But he did form one. I also told you that the performance of this “Jafari” government is controversial. And I put Jafari in quotation marks for a reason and a tricky way to mean something. Because the word Jafari in Iraq also refers to “Shiite Islam” so when you call a man as a “Jafari” it means he follows the version of Islam that was studied and developed by one of the Shiites’ main Imams, Jafar al-Sadiq.

With this government coming into power, the violence escalated in the country and started a new trend. The ethnic-based assassinations and revenge killings found a strong base and a welcoming environment with a government that is busy with solving its internal problems and has no time to turn to the wider community disasters. A government that was busy with renewing and practicing rituals of hundred years ago, when its people were dying and are dying everyday with no guilt, but to be fooled to go to the ballot boxes and vote for men and women, whose connection and interest in Iraq is only power and money.

The government was tasked with writing a permanent constitution for the country. A process that took them so long that, not surprisingly, they had to miss the deadline twice. By the way, the Iraqi politicians never met a deadline. For those who haven’t been following the news from Iraq, I tell you that when the first deadline was put for the Iraqi politicians, which was to finish and approve the Transitional Administrative Law by the Governing Council, they missed it and American officials had to intervene to convince them to approve it. When the deadline was put to choose a PM, they missed it. When the PM had a deadline of a month to form a government, he missed it and took three and a half more months to do so. And the deadline-missing continues.

In Jafari’s government, the main posts were distributed as follows:
Ibrahim al-Jafari, Shiite: PM
Rosh Shawees, Kurd: Deputy PM
Ahmed Chalabi, secular: Deputy PM
Galal Talbani, Kurd: President
Adil Abdul Mehdi, Shiite: Vise President
Ghazi al-Yawar, Sunni: Vise President
Masoud Barzani, Kurd: President of Kurdistan region [because Talbani got a presidency post]
Hahcim al-Hasani, Sunni : chairman of the National Assembly
Hussein al-Shehristani, Shiite: deputy chairman of the National Assembly
Arif Tayfour, Kurd: deputy chairman of the National Assembly
Bayan Jabr Solagh, Shiite: Minister of Interior
Sadoun al-Dulaimi, Sunni: Minister of Defense
Hoshyar Zebari, Kurd: Minister of Foreign Affairs

Note that the distribution of posts was based on ethnic background and they are the same people who were in the Governing Council, or members of their parties!

Writing a Constitution
The Iraqi politicians worked “hard” to write up a constitution that “all Iraqis would accept and approve.” The National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqis formed a 55-member committee to write the Iraqi Permanent Constitution. The Sunnis were ill-represented in this committee. Of its 55 members, only two Sunnis got seats around its table. But the reason for that is logical. The Sunnis have widely boycotted the elections that gave birth to the national assembly. As a result, they’ve got a few seats in the assembly. Therefore, and because the committee depended on a percentage of the participation in the National Assembly, the Sunnis lost their power and impact on the process of writing the constitution. The way I think about this is that there is no one to blame for that but the Sunni politicians because they’ve lost it and now are struggling to get it back. [the power I mean]

To solve this problem, and to try to convince the Sunni people to vote for the constitution in the referendum, the Iraqi government decided to add 13 Sunni members in the committee to write the constitution.

The deadline for writing the constitution was August 15, 2005. And yes, they’ve missed the deadline. There were many disputes in the way of the writing process. Some of the disputes were: the federalism [the Kurds were with federalism because they already have their own federal region and would not give it up ever. The Shiites were with and always called for federalism because their militias want to rule the center and southern of Iraq and exhaust the resources because their leaders think they’ve “suffered” enough in exile in Iran, Syria, and London and they have the right to be paid back. The Sunnis, of course, rejected. I think they rejected the idea for two reasons: 1- because they have to reject to prove that they are against dividing Iraq (as if it is united anyway) and 2- because if they accept federalism, it means they’ll get Mosul, Tikrit, Anbar, and maybe Diyala together to form a federal region. These provinces have no oil resources and no real economy to depend on. Therefore, the Sunnis would be the only losers in this federalism. Their announced and propagandist reason for why they reject federalism though is that they are “against the Zionist and occupier plan to divid the united Iraq.”]

Another dispute was Dibaathification, or the process of forcing out the Iraqis, who once were high ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. Forgetting, or ignoring I would say, the fact that Adil Abdul Mehdi was a high member of the same party before. He is now a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. And Iyad Allawi, the PM before Jafari, was too. [the Shiites wanted the debaathification committee to be mentioned in the constitution and have legislative authority and rights. This is of course a kind of revenge and it is the best time to get it because, as the Shiites believe, the baathists were the ones who tortured the Iraqis and the ones who benefited in the last 30 years. Of course, agains, ignoring the fact that there were more Shiites in the Baath party than the Sunnis. By logic, the Shiites are more than the Sunnis in the country, and because we all know that half of the Iraqis were forced to be baathists, the Shiites were more than the Sunnis in the party. The Kurds also favored the dibaathification process to take revenge of the massacres Saddam Hussein has committed against the Kurds over the years of his reign. The Sunnis on their turn didn’t favor or lets say strongly objected the idea of dibaathification. Simply because many of the current Sunni politicians were baathists.]

Oil revenues and who dominates them was another dispute. [the Shiites wanted the constitution to say that the regional governments, after applying federalism, should be the controller of the oil resources in Iraq. Because in this way, Mullah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, sayid Muqtada al-Sadr, Ibrahim al-Jafari, all led by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani will be the only businessmen who are able to decide to which bank account and under whose name should the income of these resources go to and the percentage given to each one of them and how much should be spent on reconstructing Iraq (woops. There is no reconstruction yet, the security situation doesn’t allow that. Hell with reconstruction.) The Kurds would love for the regional government to get the right to play with oil (are you kidding me, with all the oil wells in the north!!) The Sunnis, again, rejected that the oil revenues to be overseen by the regional governments (they already reject federalism for God’s sake) and they wanted the central government to take control of the oil resources because if that doesn’t happen, the Sunni regions will be poorer than Somalia! Where would the Sunni politicians get fortunes from?]

And other disputes that deadlocked the process of writing the constitution. During the months of the process, the Iraqis continued to be killed and we’ve seen Jafari, Talbani, and other politicians go on TV and “condemn and denounce these criminal actions that aim to interrupt to political process.” But what have they done to smooth the process? They disagreed with each other, which is, I believe, is equal to what the insurgents do. “Interrupting the political process.”

You are Free to Choose. There is only one option anyway
The Sunnis, after the shock that their demands weren’t met and to work according to the Iraqi proverb “it is either you let me fuck you, or I will not play with you,” they decided to “democratically” boycott the political process. I here remind you again that the Iraqis are still being killed outside, while the politician were working “hard” inside the Green Zone to apply their agendas and their friends’. After the Sunnis threatened to boycott, the Shiites and the Kurds stepped down and found a way to temporarily solve the problem. (it’s a cat and mouse game.) Because it took too long and more Iraqis were being killed, not that they would care but because the international politicians have had enough of the shit, they’ve convinced the Sunnis that they should persuade their followers to participate in the referendum and vote for the constitution, and after the formation of the full-term government they will have four months to solve the disputes. The Sunnis accepted and the referendum was held and the constitution was passed.

In the constitution, the politicians said that the block that gets the largest number of seats in the parliament could nominates the Prime Minister, which will always be the Shiites because they are and will stay for ever the largest faction of Iraq. Also, they made the constitution say that the candidate for the Presidency post should get two thirds approval in the parliament, which means that as long as the Shiites are in coalition with the Kurds, the president will be a Kurd because they together make more than two thirds in the parliament. In the constitution too, the Prime Minister, who is a Shiite, could announce martial laws whenever he wants with the approval from the parliament, which is dominated by the Shiites and the Kurds. Which means, whenever other factions of Iraq choose to disagree with the government, the government could arrest, kill, and punish those who appose it.

What kind of democracy is this, which doesn’t allow Iraq to have a non-Shiite prime minister or a non-Arab President? What kind of democracy is it that imposes a Shiite interior minister for ever? [because if the Sunnis present a candidate for the post, two third objection is ready from the Shiites and the Kurds. And that was prepared to make it easy for the Shiite militias to work under the umbrella of the ministry of interior as is happening now.] What the world is not getting is that the Iraqis got democracy, that is right. But it is another kind of democracy. A democracy where there is no choice but the one you have. There is no choice but what the constitution says, which is orchestrated based on what the multi-dictatorship Iraqi government wants. Have we asked ourselves if the Sunnis could nominate a PM? Could the Kurds nominate a PM? If they cannot, where is democracy? Who said that a Sunni cannot be a good and just PM? Or a Kurd? Is the problem of Iraq would be solved when the PM always is a Shiite? Who said a Shiite PM wouldn’t be a dictator? In fact we have a live evidence that a Shiite dictator could be the worst dictator ever. Jafari!

The Elections and forming a government
In December 15, the Iraqis crowded in the polling centers. Kurds, Arabs, Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and other minorities left their homes ignoring death threats and violence and arrived to the ballot boxes to find an end to their miseries. They wanted to vote for their saviors. They wanted to shout “enough of the violence and lets have a life.” The candidates whom the Iraqis had the option to choose from are the same ones I mentioned in the first and second parts of this entry. No one added, no one removed. Jafari, Hakim, Allawi, Chalabi, Hashimi, Mutlaq, Absul Mehdi, and the others. The same members of the Governing Council, same members of the National Assembly, same members of Allawi’s government, same members of Jafari’s government, and they will be the same members of Iraq’s political process until they die. Seriously. That is just Iraq’s history in politics. All the politicians stay in power until they are killed or they die.

Now, and more than four months after the elections, the government is not formed. The constitution says that the parliament should convene within two weeks after the results of the elections are announced. They missed the deadline, no surprise! Why they missed it? Because the Sunnis complained that their seats in the parliament are not enough and don’t truly represent their percentage in the community. After American and British intervention, the Shiites and the Kurds “democratically” decided to give the Sunnis more seats. To hell with the constitution and the voters’ opinion! So, they found a way to pass this, which was “let’s count the votes again. Oooooops, we found some more seats for you ‘brother’ Sunnis!”

Then another problem appeared. Given the mall performance of Jafari’s government and the ethnic hatred the government worked with in its year-long term, the Kurds and the Sunnis for the first time announced a unified decision. “we don’t want Jafari to be the next PM.” And because Jafari was the Shiites’ candidate, the Shiites said “He is our candidate and if you don’t like it, well we don’t care.” The Kurds and the Sunnis then threatened to boycott the political process. Again, thousands of Iraqis were killed and thousands more will be killed while the politicians are working “hard” to rebuild the new Iraq. “The unified Iraq” as Jafari and many poker-faced politicians call it. To solve this problem, Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw came to Iraq and threatened to fire all the Iraqi politicians if they don’t shut up and play according to the rules! The Shiites then said “we need time to solve this.” So, the Iraqis continued the sacrifices and they continued losing friends, fathers, sons, mothers, and children and continued waiting for the awaited government. It doesn’t matter because by now, we all know that the Iraqis don’t count when it comes to power and the “constitutional rights” the politicians call for. Jafari, imitating Saddam Hussein, refused to step down and contribute to ending the Iraqi bloodshed. He decided that “the Iraqis elected me and I have to respect their decision.” Totally ignoring the fact that he wasn’t elected by the Iraqis. Instead, he was appointed by the Shiite alliance that the Iraqis stupidly voted for just because their religious authorities told them to do so. Totally ignoring the Jadiriya prison scandal, which involved dozens of Sunni who were found malnourished and tortured in an interior ministry detention facility a few months ago. Totally ignoring more prisons found with people tortured and killed in them and all happened in his reign. Totally ignoring that the civil war started when he got the PM position. Totally ignoring the fact that most of the Iraqis say a loud “No” when they are asked if the want Jafari to stay a PM or not. But to hell with Iraqis!

A few weeks after the deadline, the parliament convened, finally. According to the constitution, the parliament should announce the name of the president and the two deputies in the first session, the president should ask the PM candidate to present his platform within 15 days and present his cabinet within a month after that. And because there wasn’t a PM, because Jafari wouldn’t step down and help the Iraqis to stop the violence and the killings and help them to save the lives that are being killed by the hour as long as he stays in his position and there is no government formed, and because the Shiite alliance got orders from the “wise” religious authority not to divide within itself and to prove that they are “united” no matter how many Iraqis are killed daily, the parliament couldn’t present the president. And to find a way to fool us, the politicians invented a wicked way to show the Iraqis that they were up to the task and they convened. But to save face and not admit the failure that they couldn’t solve their own personal problems and find a PM, they suspended the first session [they didn’t end it] they suspended the first session so that they can take time to decide who is the PM. With this solution, they can take a year until they decide and also whenever they decide, it will be announced in the first session of the parliament! Clever huh! Where are the Iraqis from that? Do you still believe that the politicians are working for the Iraqis?

Jafari wouldn’t step down. The Sunnis and Kurds wouldn’t accept him a PM. The Shiites are proud enough not to say they’ve lost credibility. The politicians say the want to form a “National Unity Government.” By which they mean that it includes all factions of Iraqis. Well, the current government, under this definition, is a “national unity government.” It has Kurds, Arabs, Turkumans, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, and others. It really is a “national unity government.” But did it prove good? No. And what do they mean when they say “we want a national unity government?” Aren’t they the same politicians? Aren’t they: Jafari, Allawi, Hakim, Abdul Mehdi, Hashimi, Chalabi, Mutlaq, and the other members of the gang? So what is the difference? What would they don more than what they’ve already done? What would make it a better government and people trust it? What they don’t get is that they need a government with a National Unity Performance. A government that would punish a Shiite the same way it punishes a Sunni wit the same guilt. That punishes a Kird the same way it punishes a Turkuman with the same guilt. That is what Iraq needs now.

Now they tell us that they would have to form a “National Salvation Government” to solve the country of the disaster if the PM problem is not solved soon. What the hell…. The members will be Jafari, Hakim, Allawi, Chalabi, Abdul Mehdi, Hashimi, Mutlaq, and the others… what would they do more than what they’ve done already?

Iraq be able to practice democracy until the current politicians resign and the new generation that saw and witnessed the sufferings come up to the political life and climb the ladder to try to solve our problems. The current politicians are driven by their hatred to the former regime, for the Shiites the former regime is pictured in their minds as all the Sunnis, and for the Kurds it is pictured as all the Arabs. The Sunnis are driven by their hatred to Iran, the ever lasting complex. And they believe that all the Shiites are Iranians. They are driven by years of exile and they want to make piece with that, by creating war in the country. That is a fact that we have to realize. It will take Iraq a generation to realize what the loss is. It will take the Iraqis a long time to realize that the loser is always an Iraqi!

This is a two-part entry I wanted to write to try to memorize the last three years of political marathon in Iraq.

Part One: Iraqis Have Been Killed To Reward Politicians!

As you all heard, the Iraqi parliament has postponed its session for “a few days.” It is not a big deal! A few more days won’t change anything in the massacre Iraq is going through since April 2005, when the current government was seated.

Last Wednesday, the parliament’s acting speaker, Adnan al-Pachachi, called for the political leaders and parliamentary blocs to convene today, Monday, to present the new Iraqi president and his two deputies and the new Iraqi prime minister. This move was supposed to take place at least two months ago, according to the Iraqi new permanent constitution.

In December 15, the Iraqis went to the streets, challenging death threats and insurgents’ warning, just to try to change the three–year long political, economic, and social crumbling of the country that benefited no one and has not solved itself, as the Iraqi wanted it to do. The Iraqis were waiting for their politicians to end the disaster, the politicians were waiting for the disaster to solve itself because they were and still are busy shaming each other and trying to take their rights and the others’.

When the Americans and their allies invaded Iraq, the first thing they’ve done was to dissolve the Iraqi army and police. They thought that the Iraqi security forces are all loyal to Saddam Hussein. So, they decided that they don’t need them. They thought the coalition forces are enough to secure a country with centuries of ethnic divisions and decades of ethnic cleansing and conflicts. A country with 35 years of dictatorship. A country with people that have no ability to decide for themselves, because over the history, they were used to be directed, not asked.

When they invaded Iraq, they didn’t have an already-formed Iraqi government to take place after Hussein’s was toppled. Instead, they installed an American administration to rule the country and take responsibility of its future. They decided to rule a country that was closed into itself and isolated from the world for decades. Their only advisors were Iraqis who’ve never been to Iraq in the last 40 years at least. All what the Iraqi exiles knew about the country and its people is what the reports they got from either Iraqis inside Iraq, who had their own agenda, or from Iraqis who’ve been in Jordan and Syria for the last ten years, minimum. When people from Iraq, intellectuals, artists, professionals, who never left the country tried to involve in the process of building a new Iraq, the exiles forced them out of the room because they didn’t share the same interests! There is no doubt that the majority of Iraqis wanted the Baathist regime to be wiped out. But no one of the new comers, foreign or Iraqi, knew how to handle the aftermath, simply because they weren’t familiar with the Iraqi community as of 2003. That was one of the huge mistakes committed in Iraq after the occupation was formally announced by United Nation and Security Council resolutions.

After a few months of total failure [go back to reports from that time and see the failure I am talking about,] the Americans decided that it was time for Iraqis to participate in the decision makers’ sessions, but as an audience only. That was when the 25-seat Governing Council or GC was formed, back in July 2003. That governing council, sources at the time said, had no decision-making authority. It was more of a propaganda to show the Iraqis and the world that the country is not led only by foreigners. Most of the members in the governing council were exiles, who came to the “liberated” country after the invasion. Of course I don’t blame them for fleeing Iraq, because have they stayed in Iraq, Saddam Hussein would have killed them. I only blame them for insisting that they are the ones who deserve to be the new Iraqi leaders, just because they’ve been forced to leave the country and “suffer” in foreign countries, where they’ve had privileges other citizens of these countries didn’t get! I blame them for insisting that they were in their luxurious villas and apartments outside Iraq and suffered more than the politicians who stayed in Iraq and were forbidden from leaving it and tried to work with low profile to avoid torture and assassination.

The governing council included, Iyad Allawi (later to be the first Prime Minister in post-war Iraq), Ghazi al-Yawar (later to be the first president in post-war Iraq), Ahmed al-Chalabi (later to be a deputy PM), Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (later to stay a Mulla and a key player in the Iraqis-against-Iraqis game), Jalal Talbani (later to be Iraq’s first Kurdish president ever), Masoud barzani (later to be a president in the northern region of Kurdistan), Ibrahim al-Jafari (later to be Iraq’s first elected PM and insists “democratically” to stay in the position), Samir Shakir al-Sumaidaie (later to be Iraq’s head of mission in the U.N. and then Iraq’s ambassador in the U.S.A.), Muwaffaq al-Rubaie (later to be a national security advisor), Adnan al-Pachachi (later to be acting chairman of the first full-term parliament), and other players, who were only sitting on the bench the whole time and still. Of the 25 members, I only could count three who were inside Iraq suffering Hussein’s regime. The three of them were women and had no role in the game. No role at all.

The presidency of the governing council rotated monthly among nine members of the governing council [in fact they’ve become 11 members for some reasons, including the assassination of one president while serving in the position.] The rotating came not out of no where, it came to give the first hints of the divisions of the Iraqi community and the problems and struggle over power among the political factions in Iraq. Every faction believes its members deserve to rule because they’ve suffered more. They couldn’t agree on one president for the council to lead in the next nine or ten months. Therefore they fooled the Iraqis of this rotating system. I couldn’t find another way to understand it!

In fact, the formation of the GC was a way to reward the Iraqi politicians who “suffered” in the exile and those who suffered inside the country because of the dictatorship of the former regime. It was a clever, later proved to be the stupidest, way to reward them and make them enjoy power for a while. The presidency rotation is a clear evidence of this reward thing is the presidency rotating. And here is how I believe it was:

- Iyad Allawi: for his close relation and cooperation with the CIA.
- Ahmed al-Chalabi: for his magic power and role in convincing the world that a war against Saddam Hussein’s government was necessary to save the globe.
- Ibrahim al-Jafari: for the sacrifices his Islamic Dawa party has paid over the nearly 30 years of struggle against Hussein’s government.
- Adnan al-Pachachi: he is one of the few respectable Iraqi politicians in the process and the eldest. He had to be given a post in the new Iraq in his last years.
- Muhammed Bahr al-Uloom: for the sacrifices Bahr al-Uloom family paid and the members it lost to Hussein’s brutal regime. And Bahr al-Uloom family is one of the most known and recognizable in Iraq.
- Abdul Aziz al-Hakim: as an acknowledgment to his family’s sacrifices in the struggle against Hussein’s regime and his Supreme Council for the Iraqi revolution in Iraq.
- Jalal Talbani: a Kurd, and the Kurds had to have their share of the cake. Also, he is one of those known for their opposition to the Iraqi former government, as all are.
- Masoud Barzani: Talbani and Barzani were and are rivals. If Talbani gets it, Barzani should too.
- Ghazi al-Yawar: he is a descendent of one of Iraq’s biggest and most powerful Sunni tribes, Shammar. Of course he would get it. Plus, he is from Mosul. If the Kurds and Shiites get it, the Sunnis in the north will get it. That’s is just the Iraqi way.
- Izzaldin Salim: he is from Basra. Mosul got it, shouldn’t Basra get it too?
- Muhsin Abdul Hamid: at the time, he was the secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Sunni’s biggest and the only party that formally participated in the political process after the invasion. There had to be an evidence that the Sunnis are included in the process.
Note that non of the interim presidents of the GC was inside Iraq or suffered under Saddam Hussein. Those who suffered under Saddam Hussein shouldn’t be rewarded. It was their choice to suffer. No one asked them to!

Then a year after playing the Governing Council game, the decision makers in Iraq decided that it was the time to pretend that Iraq is sovereign and end the occupation. It was in fact changing the word from occupation forces into forces that the Iraqi government, appointed by the occupation forces, has asked to stay in Iraq and help in stabilizing it.

Iyad Allawi, a secular, was appointed by the Americans as a PM and all the names I mentioned above, plus others, were given government positions and ministries. The government’s first task was to hold Iraq’s first free elections to elect a National Assembly. The elections were held in January 2005, in which the Sunnis didn’t participate, and the 275-member national assembly was seated shortly after that. The assembly, which was only in power for one year, was tasked with electing its chairman the president of Iraq and his two deputies. Also, it had to charge the Prime Minister, nominated by the assembly’s largest group, in this case the Shiites, with forming his government to be approved. The deadline for forming a government was a month.

Because the Shiite political groups are headed by the two main ones, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Islamic Dawa Party, led by Ibrahim al-Jafari, those main parties had the right to nominate the name of the PM. In fact they didn’t have the right to, but in a country that got rid of the one-man dictatorship and replaced it with a militia and religious dictatorship, those parties are the most powerful and could turn the country into hell if they weren’t allowed to nominate the name. and because Hakim is a Mulla and presents himself as a religious leader more than a political one, Jafari got the post. Four months later, and after hundreds of Iraqis were killed and hundreds of them disappeared, Jafari formed his government, in which the Sunnis didn’t participate. The performance of this government is very controversial and the output was very little. The only progress to be made under this government was in the attempts to fuel a sectarian conflict. Since late April 2005, statistics and officials from both sides, Iraqi and American, say that thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped and assassinated for no reason but their religious and ethnic background.

To be continued..

What Took You So Long Guys?

Here is how I woke up and lived this day, April 9, but three years ago.

The night before, I slept after listening to the news from different outlets. On Jazeera satellite channel, the news talked about the American forces making their way to Baghdad. they talked about these forces cordoning the city from the south and the west. On another channel, or maybe the same, I heard Iraq’s best clown ever, Muhammed Saied al-Sahaf, former minister of information and the former regime’s mouthpiece, saying that al what we’ve been hearing about the coalition forces success in closing on Baghdad and the soon braking through was simply a “lie” and that the Iraqi forces were fighting the “occupiers” and there is no chance for the occupation to win the battle. I slept that night thinking: why is it taking them so long to come here? Why would it take so long for me to see the “liberators” and high-five them?

The next morning, April 9, 2003, I woke up on the news: “They are here,” my cousin told me. He was very excited. We spent the whole time during the war driving around Baghdad, especially in the afternoons, to se how much of our city is destroyed and how much is left. We spent the whole time wondering “why is it taking them long? Even if they were riding camels, they would be here by now.”

We immediately jumped in his car and drove in the neighborhood looking for the American military vehicles. It didn’t take us long. A few minutes of driving and here they are; tanks with foreign soldiers on the top waving back to people who waved white flags at them [a sign of piece.] I wanted to personally wave to one of them. I did. He or she waved back. Then we kept driving in the streets and see where the “visitors” were and how they look like. At the end of the day, I felt I did my part. I thanked them for launching this war to help me have a better future. I was waiting for this future to come, or at least to appear in the horizon. And when they came, I believed it would be the first step. I am still waiting!

Feeh