Arabs First Created...

COMMERCIAL JINGLES!!!!!

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود ماذا فعلت بناسك متعبد؟
قد كان شمر للصلاة ثيابه حتى وقفت له بباب المسجد
ردى عليه صلاته وصيامه لا تقتليه بحق دين محمد

the hero of this story is a poet called Miskin al-Darmi, who is an Umayyad-era Poet, who died in 90 AH.

SCENE: Medina.
al-Darmi in his house, with an Iraqi friend named Sulayman al-Baghdadi.

Darmi: Good going, dude, we managed to stay the whole night worshiping in the mosque.
Baghdadi: You know man, I wasn't worshiping in sincerity, but I had nothing else to do.
Darmi: What, you sold all your stock?
Baghdadi: Well, yes, except for the black burqaas, which constitute 4/5 of my goods.
Darmi: Why did you buy so much of these?
Baghdadi: Well because women in Iraq have taken it in fashion these days, so I thought it would be fashionable for the women of Medina.
Darmi: So what are you going to do now?
Baghdadi: Man, I'm in such a bad streak, ever since I stopped getting drunk at parties I've never seen anything good come to me. I've put all my money in these veils and now all I got to do is go back to Iraq and declare bankruptcy.
Darmi: Wait, I've got just the thing for you.

The next day al-Darmi sheds down his worshiping robes and dons partying clothes. his wife Jaleela is dumbfounded.

Jaleela: What the fudge are you doing? What do you think people are going to say?
Darmi: They'll say: al-Darmi reverted back to his old indecent ways and abandoned the path of worship.
Jaleela: and you like that?
Darmi: Whatever, I've decided to go back to what I was, it's more like me.
Jaleela: Woe to you!
Darmi: Don't worry, I'll be back poring over the Qur'an in no time.
Jaleela: Yeah right, you're going to spend your days writing indecent love poems and odes to those sultry concubines and then you come to me late at night, drunk and haggled, no sir, I'm going to my parents' house.

A party in the house of Abu Ayman, his concubines are led by the Singer Lamyaa, who sings some verses of al-Darmi's

Abu Ayman: Hit them with the new tune, Lamyaa.
Crowd: Yes, please, we want the new hit tune.
Lamyaa: I'm not going to sing it until I get the black burqaa.
Abu Ayman: I've had the boy go pick it up since early morning, and I don't know why it took him so long.
Ibn Suraij The Oud player: Here he comes at last!
Boy: Here's the black Burqaa, sir.
Abu Ayman: God curse your black face, what took you so long?
Boy: My good sir, look at my clothes, they're torn from the severe crowding and fights I've had to get into in order to get this burqaa. Everybody in town is buying those burqaas from the Iraqi merchant.
Ibn Surayji: So now you have your burqa, Lamyaa.
Lamyaa (dons it): How do I look in this?
Abu Ayman: By God! I never thought a black Burqa would look this good on anyone.
Crowd: So hit us with the tune now.
Lamyaa sings and Ibn Surayj plays:

Ask that beauty in the black burqa
What has she done to this obedient saint?
He was getting ready to pray, yet
her sight by the mosque door, made him faint
Leave him to his fasting and his prayers
By Mohammed's religion! leave him to his restraint

Abu Ayman: Dance to it Lamyaa, it's made for dancing!
Lamyaa re-sings the verses while dancing, getting everybody visibly excited.

***
Darmi: Come back to me Jaleela, I've abandoned my marauding ways.
Jaleela: Look at this hypocrite, now that he's made a mockery out of himself he wants me back!
Her mother: Yes, everybody is talking about him these days.
Her father: Why did you do this to yourself?
Darmi: I'll tell you why.
Somebody outside sings: Ask the beauty in the black burqaa/what has she done....
Jaleela: Listen to this mother! Look, why don't you go back to your black burqaa beauty and leave me alone.
Darmi: There is no such girl, don't you people know the Iraqi merchant Sulayman? Haven't you seen that every woman in town has bought his Iraqi black burqas until there's none left?
Jaleela's father: Yes, even your wife begged me to buy one for her.
Darmi: Really? you wanted to be the Black Burqa Beauty yourself?
Jaleela: No, but I saw everybody do it so I did it myself.
Darmi: You see? I did what I did only so that I can help my Iraqi friend sell his undesirable black burqas! He's even sent for his dealer in Iraq to bring him more of them, they're selling like hot cakes.

Translated from the play by Ahmed Ali Bakthir, which is based on a true story.
The verses are famous, and they're still sung until today, most recently by an Egyptian fusion? band with some western influences called Wust il Balad.

This is the first installment of my Arabs First Created series.

Batatu: Chapter 3 : Geographic Distribution of the Principal Racial-Religious Groups

[this chapter was especially illumantive to me regarding the question of Sunni-Shi'i distribution in old Iraq (before the 1800s) and what did "Iraq" exactly mean at the time]

Iraq may be said to have been, in the time of the monarchy, divided into three religious zones.

One of these zones, the most populous, was and remains the home of Shiism. it covers all the provinces to the south of Baghdad. In its ethnic composition it is Arab except for concentrations of Iranians in Basrah and the Holy Cities of Najaf and Karbala. Its Shiism is not unbroken. Here and there it is interspersed with islands of Sunnism, which are urban in character and, in their size, inconsiderable, except in Basrah and Nasiriyyah, where there are strong Sunni minorities, and in the town of Zubair, southwest of Basrah, which is entirely Sunni.

A second religious zone, embracing Arab-inhabited valleys of the Euphrates above Baghdad and of the Tigris between Baghdad and Mosul, is the domain of Sunnism. Here only small Shii minorities at Dujail, Balad, Samarra, and a string of Turkmen settlements, some of which are Shi'i as in Tal Afar and Toz Khomatu, breach the Sunni continuity.

The third religious zone conincides with the Kurdish rain-fed mountain crescent in the north and northeast of Iraq. This zone is also Sunni, but unlike the Sunni Arab region, it was in the period of monarchy permeated by mysticism and by its practitioners, the Sufis. This is not to say that there were no traces of Arab Sufism, however, in monarchic days had none ouf the outward vigor of Kurd mysticism.

EXPLANATIONS FOR THIS RELIGIOUS CONFIGURATION
Nearly at thousand years ago, Abu Bakr al-Khawarizmi (d 993) envied the people of Iraq because, as he put it, "in their midst are the tomb-sanctuaries of [Ali]...and of Hussein, and because Shiism is Iraqi." At the time the name Iraq referred not to the territory of present day Iraq, but only to that part which lay south of a line connecting Anbar (or according to another view, Haditha) on the Euphrates and Tikrit on the Tigris, that is, it coincided, except for Baghdad and areas north of Baghdad, with the abode of the Shi'is.the heart of the sect was then, as now, the Middle Euphrates, the role of the Buwayhids in Baghdad (from 945 t o1055) and al-Mazyad of Bani Asad from Hilla to Basra (1012 to 1150) helped or consolidated the advance of Shi'i principles. So did also the power that the Shii Arab dynasty of the Musha'sh' Saadah wielded from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Gulf in the middle of the fifteenth century. But before and after that time the country passed through a succession of conquests: the Euphrates and Tigris changed their main beds ; medieval towns, like Wasit and Madai'n disappeared, new towns, like Amara and Nasiriyah came into life, old tribes were scattered or subdued, and new tribes from Arabia moved into the river valleys, Yet in the midst of all the vicissitude and instability one feature persisted: the overwhelmingly Shi'i character of this zone. How can one account for this Shii continuity, particularly in the face of long centuries of apparent Sunni dominance, the dominance of the Ottoman Turks (1534-1622, 1638-1917) and their nominal vassals, the Georgian Mamluks (1749 - 1831)??

Apart from the power of persistence natural to religions and in particular to aggrieved sects, one obvious factor making for the perpetuation of Shi'i influence was :

[1] the presence of the Shii sanctuaries of Najaf and Karbala, and Shii schools at Najaf and Hillah.
[2] The commercial and religious intercourse that the Shias of Iraq maintained, if interruptedly, with Shi'i Persia.
[3] The contagion of the environment, Bedouin tribes who moved into the Shi'i zone - and Islam sat lightly on the Bedouins - tended in time, ti wold appear, to adapt themselves to its beliefs and practices.
[4] The missionary zeal of the mumans, who were itinerant men of religion.

It may be wondered how Shii conversions took place seemingly under the very nose of the Sunni government, the explanation is simple. During the greater part of the Ottoman period the write of the authorities ran precariously outside the main towns.

[5] The conversions may have even come about on account of the government: the tribes' intolerance of government - any government. and their association of government with oppression, plus the fact that the government was Sunni, may have eased the task of the mumans and the transition to Shiism.

The government accorded the Shi'is full liberty to make their devotions in their own manner in all the places that they considered sacred, apparently because it stood to gain from the flow of pilgrims to Iraq. But in all other places, as in Basrah or in Baghdad proper, they were denied the free exercise of their religion. This rule must have been relaxed in the course of the later part of the nineteenth century, under the monarchy the religious freedom of the Shiis became complete.

In turning to the Sunni Arab zone, the thing that catches attention is that Shiism never penetrated it in strength, while a Shii dynasty, the Hamdanis wielded authority in Mosul between 905 and 979, but it hardly made a dent in the Sunni loyalty of its inhabitants. An attempt to encourage Shiism by Badr-ud-Din Lulu, a slave who ruled Mosul for about forty years in the first half of the 19th century, failed to evoke any response. with minor exceptions, the whole region remained steadfast in its attachment to Sunnism down to our own time. Perhaps the most crucial explanation for this is the fact that, in their economic relationships, the regions of Mosul and the upper Euphrates were oriented toward Sunni Syria and, in a lesser degree, toward Sunni Turkey. Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that in the days of the monarchy the people of Mosul were closer in outlook and temperament to the Arabs of Syria, specficially of Aleppo, than to the Arabs of central and southern Iraq. (True, even the Mosuli accent, which I speak since I'm half-Mosuli, has more similarity with the softer Levantine dialects of Arabic than the harsher, more tribal accent of Iraq proper and the Gulf.)

Hanna Batatu, Iraq : Social classes.

I have finally resigned and began the exhausting task of reading the mammoth "phonebook" of Hanna Batatu about Iraq, (apx. 1300 pages, with fine letters), I shall jot down some notable paragraphs on my blog as I progress through it:

P. 17, DIVERSITY OF IRAQIS:

Of course, the more conscious of the townsmen thought themselves as part of the realm of Islam, and Islam's ideals, though denuded of much of their old vigor, tended to rescue them to some extent from their localism and associate them with their brother Muslims within and beyond the confines of the Ottoman Empire. But Islam in Iraq was more a force of division rather than of integration. It split deeply Sunni and Shi'i Arabs, socially they seldom mixed, and as a rule they did not intermarry. To the strict Shi'is, the government of the day - the government of the Ottoman Sultan that led Sunni Islam - was, in essence, a usurpation. In their eyes, it had not the qualification to even execute the laws of Islam. They were, therefore, estranged from it, few caring to serve it or attend its schools.

Of course, today things are much different, mostly thanks to the pseudo-secular period of modern-day ideologies such as Pan-Arabism and Communism, there is social intermingling and intermarriage, although today, with the full-force resurgence of old Islamic models and the hostilities along it, it seems the problems are largely the same, except they got perhaps a little uglier with all that sly decades-long maneuvering, marriages are being broken apart and friends are re-examining their relationships. Let's hope for the next episode.

Government Aims for Muqtada's Balls

It seems that the guys really mean it this time around, they're really intent on nailing Shibil al-Hawza by his firebreathing firebrand nostrils, not only are they trying to forming Shahwa (Shi'i-Sahwa) councils inside the city that carries his father's name, but they're pulling all the guns : first a National Security Council that bans all militas [which really means just the Mahdi Army because Badr is the government now] and they're also wiping the dirt off the case of Muqtada's First Blood: Sayyid Abdul-Majid al-Khoei.

Two days ago, I watched an al-Khoei family member on al-Arabiya, he said that Muwaffaq al-Rubiaye came to talk to him about reopening the case, he seemed a little irritated at all involved, first he said that al-Khoei's case was never closed in the first place so that is shall be reopened, which directly contradicts what Rasim al-Marwani, a Sadrist cultural advisor, who repeatedly said that al-Khoei family themselves had "dropped the case which was setted in good will." and second he said that too many people have used al-Khoei's murder as political leverage, which is of course a direct jab at Ibrahim al-Jaffari's stint as PM in 2005 during which he ignored the murder due to the backing of the Sadrists which directly gave him the PM position, but he could have also been referring to this recent request by al-Rubaiye, especially as he didn't really seem to be supportive of it and seemed rather annoyed at all of them.

Another al-Khoei family member, Hayder al-Khoei, writes in his blog Eye Raki about this recent development, expecting an ominous showdown (of course, being a member of al-Khoei family it's understandable for Mr. Eye Raki not to be really objective about anything involving the man who killed his father, that is if he is indeed Hayder the son of Sayyid Majid, but re-reading Eye Raki's blog with this fact in mind the guy seems to be incredibly reasonable and objective about Iraq in general, and that is damn impressive considering his family is an extremely respected religious family which is expected to be subjective, to say the least, he is much better than other Iraqi Shi'i (and Sunni) blogs.)

Everybody in the government, including the Sunnis, and most recently, Iran, have supported the government against Muqtada, who has came back to Najaf ; recent news items talk about Basra breathing a little air after months of religious monkeybrains.

So why is this happening all of a sudden, I don't want to get my hopes up as the Badrists/Iraqi Government/and even the Amreekan have played forbidden detente football with Muqtada for years now, so what has suddenly prompted this sudden rush to crush him? (Amreekans still seem reluctant about it.)

Nobody knows for sure, maybe they were encouraged by Muqtada's declaration to disappear for a while and focus on his college education, but the obvious reason is the municipal council elections, which sits as a pragmatic selfish explanation that sits in line with what has been happening in Iraq until this point, however, even if that is indeed true, I do wish that the Sadrists are destroyed in the long run and are not as powerful as everyone expected them to be, first, having one militia around is better than two, and second, the Badrists, as evil as they are, seem to be more negotiable than Qrazy Qaddo and his boneheaded supernatural take of the world, the only people who expressed sympathy were either opportunists who calculated so as to slide with the more populist Sadrists to advance their own careers such as Ibrahim "Lazga" Jaffari and Ahmed "Slimesnake" Chalabi, or Ba'athis who really have no love for them but use them to prove that their resistance is pan-Iraqi, the Sadrists have completely destroyed their own nationalistic credentials in their post-2006 killing spree, before which only Badr, with its covert sneaky assassinations were being pointed at as the extremist Shi'i.

One could certainly look with sympathetic eye towards the poor downtrodden base of Muqtada al-Sadr, I remember in the old days when we used to make fun of them like hell, not because they were Shi'i but mostly because they were dirty and backward, something even the middle-class Shi'is used to do, calling them mi'dan and shroog. it's a classic urban vs tribal situation in a way.

Ismail al-Lami aka "Shi'i Zarqawi" Abu Deraa is back in town, supposedly he returned to Basra but this al-Arabiya article says his pictures are distributed around police checkpoints in Kerbala, we finally have a good picture of him, the person who took this picture said, and I quote: "lol my father was some weeks ago in iran. he meeted Abu dere3 there in qom (iran)
he was without bodyguards walking in a place where just iraqi live there, he is a friend of my uncle who also lives there, here are some pics of abu dere3 from some weeks ago with my father and uncle", Abu Deraa reminds me of a cross between a big teddy bear and a large rodent:

Crocker About Iran, Riyadh al-Nuri's Letter

I've been a bad blogger at such a crucial period, much is going on and I have much to talk about, I really want to blog more but I just don't have the time to do it.
So I'll just scribble a few things, here's US ambassador Ryan Crocker trying to describe Iranian influence in Iraq:

REP. SMITH: I think [our presence] clearly motivates Iran to cause more problems in Iraq than they otherwise would, because if we're not there, Iran doesn't have much interest in Iraqi instability. But if we are there, given the conflict we have with Iran and the very real threats that Iran poses, they have to be worried about what our military would do if it got too secure in Iraq. So do you factor that in terms of how we reach ultimate reconciliation with Iran? And also with the various Shi'a factions -- because what happened in Basra and Baghdad recently could be simply dismissed as the government versus unlawful militias, but if you dig very deep down, you find out that there's more to it. And it's basically rival militias fighting out. The Badr Brigade seemed to be more closely allied right now with the Iraqi government, but the Badr Brigades also to some extent are allied with Iran. So what's our long-term strategy there? Are we really choosing sides between the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army?
AMB. CROCKER: Clearly, they are motivated to try to put pressure on us. That's obviously part of it. But having watched this dynamic for a number of years in the region, I think what the Iranians are doing is pursuing a policy, if you will, of Lebanonization, doing what they did in Lebanon. And they, in conjunction with Syria, have pursued a policy of backing more than one militia in Lebanon for the last quarter of a century. And we haven't been there in Lebanon as a military force since 1984. So I think they would be pursuing these kinds of efforts in Iraq.

also, a few words about Riyadh al-Nuri, it seems to be that this is an inside job, I don't have really much to say because our blogger colleague Eye Iraki is blogging extensively and in excellent detail about the topic directly from Najaf, Eye Raki used to be in London and seems to have classical middle-class Shi'i tendencies (i.e. Sistani, Hakim.)

One of the more ironic details I have learned from Eye Raki blogging is that, while reading about al-Nuri on a few websites you'd see that he is saintly described as a "moderate who wanted to disband JAM." Eye Raki says that Riyadh al-Nuri is a drillfuck murderer who used to ran sharia courts for chewing innocents in Najaf, he also talks about the struggle between al-Nuri and Ahmed al-Shaybani, an extremist JAM leader who was released from prison by the direct orders of al-Maliki a while ago, it was televised by government Sadr TV al-Iraqiya as a big deal. Speaking of al-Iraqiya, it seems that al-Maliki has finally fired its chairman, the infamous Habib al-Sadr (a family member of al-Hakim) because of his laughable "everybody is nice" coverage of the Cavalry Chaaaaaarge operation.
Eye Raki also posted a letter written by Riyadh al-Nuri a week before he died, with a summarized translation, here is a more literal and complete translation:

To the Eminence of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, Long be your glory.
May God's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you.
Praise be to Allah, the Mightiest Lord, and peace and blessings be upon my master and leader, the Prophet of Allah and his progeny, and peace be upon the martyr of the nation, the Holy Leader(=Sadr II, Qaddo's dad) (God Protects His Secret)
It is certain that your Eminence realize the difficult and critical circumstances the Mujahid Sadrist Trend is going through for various reasons and factors that could perhaps pose an opportunity for the enemies of this honorable trend, and for those seeking to eliminate it and weaken it.
Hereby, we think that to make those miss their opportunity and to protect this entity founded by the Holy Leader to defend the domain of Islam requires steadfast and quick decisions drawing from past experiences, I have mentioned in more than one occasion the mistakes and violations of some elements of the Imam Mahdi (may Allah hasten his reappearance) Army which gave the agents of the occupation a pretext to distort our reputation and denounce us.
Those corrupt elements which infiltrated the Army of Imam Mahdi (A.H.R.) have found itself a position to administer [incorrect spelling] army legions under various titles, they have carried out kidnapping, robbery and murder operations which negatively affected the populist image of the trend of the Holy Leader and its goals...thus, we see that you take into consideration the following matters so as to preserve the righteous path of the Mujahid Sadrist Trend:
1. The need to quicken the cleansing of the Sadrist Trend from corrupt elements which are commiting crimes under the protection of the Sadrist Trend and the Army of Imam Mahdi (AHR)
2. Internal, regional and international pressures force us to seriously consider the dissolution of the Army of Imam Mahdi (AHR), the recent events in Basrah and other governoates have brought undesirable effects on our popular base and so we believe that you take the incentive to dissolve the army quickly so as to preserve the eternal legacy left behind by the Holy Leader (God bless his secret)

and the final say goes to you in all that we have suggested
and may Allah's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you.

Riyadh al-Nuri
24 Rabi Awwal, 1429 AH

SOURCE: al-Rafedain.net, an especially anti-Sadrist Shi'i website.

Look at this Amir Taheri analysis of the Battle of Basra, it blames the whole fiasco on...Iran. Unsurprisingly, coming from a guy like Taheri, who seems to be the sort of US-asskisser a la Chalabi and Ajami, this analysis closely sticks to what US officials talk about all the time: the Iranian-backed Scary Special Groups, he doesn't really cite any references, a thing he has apparently done in past reportings.

p.s. Sorry for not writing about April 9 and/or political developments, I can barely have time to sleep these days.

Mookie Did It For The Nookie

Muqtada al-Sadr, outside
his Dentist clinic in Qum, reacts after being asked to
comment on the Battle of Basra, .

Muqtada al-Sadr is a very strange phenomenon. He is the sort of anti-hero that appears in cheesy comedy films starring Rob Schneider about the dork zero who suddenly finds himself in a situation he has absolutely nothing to do with, US News media constantly describe Muqtada in notoriously glorious terms, which sound absolutely hilarious to the Iraqi reader, look, I swear to God, I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that, when Muqtada speaks, the effect he exudes is something closely similar to this skit.



I swear to you I'm not exaggerating or nothing, this is how Muqtada talks to people, can you imagine what a shame it is for Iraq, a country that was the center of the world twice to have this guy to rule it?
This fallacy led many people to strongly suspect Muqtada's power, one of them is IraqPundit, who has dedicated many a post on his blog to try and debunk the propaganda campaign by Mookie's PR Firm, the Western media.
Or is he really that powerful?
Muqtada has proven to us time and again that he does control his army, and there are strong indications that Qadoo is the man with the plan, and no matter how childish he is, I think Muqtada will always be accepted as a more nationalist Iraqi than anything the shifty-eyed Badrists ever care to put out there. I mean, who would you prefer? the crazy fool or the creepy medusa? while a great margin of Shi'i folks openly deride Mooks, the Sunnis in general prefer him waaaay much more than the royal dynasty of the Hakims, my grandmother Ta'iffiya, a rather sectarian individual, commented on his interview last Friday by saying: "The poor sod, he cannot form a single comprehensible sentence. What a shame." So how could it be that such a man could possibly attain such magnificent glory? should we all mourn Iraq, and the Arabic language too openly now?

It seems to me that someone who shares the part of the blame for Muqtada's rise is none other than his formidable enemy : Saddam Hussein.

I have been dumbfounded to read that there used to be a saying in the 20th century which goes: "Cairo Writes, Lebanon Publishes, and Baghdad reads." Baghdad reads?! Really?! Excuse me, but the general sentiment regarding anyone holding a book was as this brilliant caricature by the late Iraqi cartoonist Mu'ayed Ni'ma:

Iraq's intellect and general education levels plummeted severely, starting from the 1980s onwards as Saddam engaged in a feverish battle to extend his domain first, before settling towards doing all that it takes just to keep survive, turning the people in the end into the mass of ruffians that is following Muqtada and his likes today.
the theory goes that Muqtada is Saddam's Bastard Lovechild. Meaning, he is the indirect result of several Saddam Hussein policies: the destruction of the communist party [and every other party by the way], the execution of many Iraqi intellectuals and scientists, which led to a frenzied tyrannical atmosphere that which eventually led to the dumbing down of the intellect of Iraq's population, especially when they were facing severe economic realities, and, as Yitzhaq al-Naqash closes the Iraq chapter in Shia in the Arab World Book: "Saddam Hussein's revival of tribal values and institutions - a policy that started in the 1980s and accelerated following the Gulf War was a strategy for survival and an attempt to use tribalism as a common denomintaor between Sunnis and Shi'is, like the British in 1921, Saddam bolstered the position of tribal sheikh he considered loyal, trying to turn them into a medium by which the countryside could be administered, this conicided with the Baathist attempt to regulate religion, the Ba'ath tolerated the activities of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr [Sadr II] as a way to absorb the religious energy of Shi'is and direct it away from the regime. At the same time, it allowed the organization of Sunni Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brothers and Salafis with Wahhabi inclinations, seeking to use them to counterbalance the Shi'is. [...] The Ba'ath regime thus set the stage for the emergence of tribalism and Islam as potent forces following the US invasion."

Here is a fictional profile of a common Sadrist, examining his motivations from an economic viewpoint[written by Ali al-Kalawi]:

As'ad is a common young man, lost, searching for a better tomorrow, forgotten by the government, while the government might (and I stress the importance of doubt cast by the word 'might') be interested in diploma graduates, giving them an opportunity to be employed, men like As'ad who have no diploma stare at the uncertain future. Amidst his search for salvation, As'ad suddenly finds himself spending a long time in the mosques, attending mourning ceremonies and flagellating his chest strongly in order to release his pain and suffering, in the old days, people like As'ad were embraced by the bars, they would roam the streets drunken at night, only to wake up in the morning to search for some money in order to rinse it again in the bars, As'ad never missed a mourning, I mean, at least food and drinks are served in the end.
He adapted to the realities of his area, and eventually he heard of a job opening as a night guard, the only thing he needs to do is pledge allegiance to the Custodian who granted him this opportunity while the state snores somewhere oblivious to the suffering of its citizens, busy in money laundering and wasting funds in imaginary projects we only hear of but not see. Finally, some money into As'ad's empy pockets, and all he has to do is to obey the only person who provided him with a job while others shunned him, and why doesn't he do that, for isn't he the onewho gave him what he has been searching for...money for an honest living?
He would listen to what his custodian would say, and he would repeat what he said, and when words fail him because of his crude education and intellect he would resort to hands to silence those who oppose his custodian, forcing them into submission even if that submission was only superficial, it is not a big wonder as to why the custodian is popular in certain areas alone...those poor slums with no services whatsoever and where the state is only represented by an isolated police center surrounded by high cement walls. State officials are ghosts dancing on a television set, like actors in an unreal drama, and as they blather on about nonexistent contracts, fake projects and false promises the authorities of the custodian pace the streets, occasionally taking heed to services and working to provide them...it doesn't require much thinking to know where your allegiance must lie. Even if the Sayyid's men are doing it only for the money or whatever life goal they seek to pursue shrouded in religion.
and then things broke down between the government and the custodian of les miserables, and wouldn't you know it....As'ad marched out in the streets with a heavy stick, inciting disobedience and advocating martyrdom, what is life if his custodian leaves him? death to his ilk is a blessing, so he forced shops to close doors, he dragged students and teachers from schools...in a day or two, the stick in As'ad's hand became a rifle, a rifle aimed at the paramilitary commandos headquarters in his region, soon they managed to strip the commandos from their weapons and they expelled them, and so the area became void of any state apparatus, the coalition attacked with the paramilitary commandos, clashes broke out in a sporadic fashion, a few innocent lives were claimed, while the real dissidents mingled between the people, As'ad lay dead, as a rocket shot by a US fighter tore him to bits, ending a miserable life that grew up in a repulsive tyranny and matured in the reign of corruption and ruffianry.
What does As'ad and his likes represent to the government? Nothing, the government won't label them as Iraqis, only unpatriotic insurgents, did the government bother to ask why As'ad became an insurgent in the first place? As'ad wasn't buried because curfew was imposed in Baghdad, so he was put with the rest of the dead in a safe place to be buried later, the Sayyid appeared to announce his gesture, and his office commanded his followers to celebrate this occasion joyously, while the living jumped in joy in response to the Sayyid's call, As'ad was put on a car that headed to the cemetery of Najaf, forgotten like countless before him.

The Sadrist "Trend"

An excellent piece that says many things I want to say about the Sadrists, here are some portions I translated:

BY ALI BDAYWI.

The Sadrist Trend. A phrase often spoken by Sadrist current MPs, for the life of me I don't know why does Mr. Bahaa al-Aaraji and his fellow Sadrists love to say "Sadrist Trend" instead of "Sadrist Current." Actually, following the practices of the current, one finds out that it espouses a physically liquid form, Sadrists phrase their sentences in a way the matches the shape of the container, the phrase "Sadrist Trend" invokes oppression and a political victimization, this is especially apparent if it follows "targeting", as in "targeting the Sadrist Trend", a phrase seemingly glued to Mr. Bahaa's tongue. The olive branch distributed by Sayyid Muqtada's followers in sync with the battles of Basra fought by his army's members represents a symbol of the Sadrist double-standard modus operandi which favor maneuver and trickery.
The Sadrist Line, the term Mr. Bahaa prefers over the official title of the Sadrist Current, is an oratory maneuver as well, designed to say that the "Sadrist Trend" is a juridical and/or ideological line. It implies a peaceful point of view that seeks to establish a idea that in its core is quite concept-bankrupt, an ardent observer of "Sadrist Trend" publications can only find two or three words that fit the size of a 3.5 floppy disk: "Kicking The Occupation Out."

Logically we ask ourselves, is there any divine method by which we can topple Saddam's regime other than occupation? Theoretically and realistically, there was never an armed coup, or a popular uprising that managed to do that, thus the scenario we are forced to embrace would be the toppling of the regime by a US invasion that hands the government to the opposition, to create a pro-US democratic regime. Regardless of US intentions, or the political eligibility of those parties, what matters to Iraqi people are the circumstantial results of eliminating a tyrannical military rural rule that outlasted 30 years. In fact, the followers of the "Sadrist Trend" have no tangible idea of what occupation is, sure, they know how to handle an AK-47, but they understand murder more than they understand occupation, the theoretical backbone behind the Sadrist Line ideology. This is demonstrated by the first political sign of the rejection of occupation, the murder of Sayyid Abdulmajid al-Khoei as commanded by Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, based on legal documents and witnesses, this is a murder that is punishable by law, even if the family of the murdered dropped the case.

If the Sadrists had rejected the occupation since its early days, then this means one of two things: they either reject the toppling of Saddam's regime, or they reject the way the regime was toppled. What we saw was that the early Sadrist anti-occupation stance only served the remnants of the Saddamist resistance to America since the two coincided temporally. the early Sadrist resistance confused even populist Iraqi society and state institutions which collapsed due to major mistakes the Americans are to be blamed for. As soon as the ex-regime government Fedayeen and Foreign Fighters were quelled, the Sadrists broke out as if fighting for Hala and Raghad Hussein, what is that about? the direct enemy of Sadr II was Saddam Hussein. Saddam killed Sadr II, executed Sadr I and his sister Bint-al-Huda after she was raped. So why were the Sadrists so keen on fighting the Americans? More importantly, the Sadrists borrowed from the ex-regime the same mentality we need to put out of existence: belief in revolution, rifles and adoption of an ignorant community as a massive popular base, which runs contrary to the traditional Dawa party that favored more intellectual colorings.

the Iraqi people wanted to live in civillian clothes after Saddam, they wanted to bury the AK-47 they lived with for dozens fo years, the Iraqis wanted to be overjoyed, to end the legend of the Eternal Leader, however the Sadrists severely protected those leftovers of the past: ignorant men with no education, herd mentality, deliberate ignorance, Eternal Leaders, and Sadr Offices that issues dispatches for civilians.

Link: Arabic

April Glaspie: Assad smart, Saddam megalomaniac

April Glaspie, the US ambassador in Iraq who was accused of not warning Saddam enough before he invaded Kuwait, spoke to Dar al-Hayat, here are some things she said, some of which I've been saying here on this blog:

* Saddam's issue with Kuwait isn't just oil theft, he's just megalomaniac.His whole political career derived from overcoming the humiliation of his past . He came from nowhere, he was a self-made man...he grew up at a time when Iraqis believed understandably they were worthy of the leadership of the Arab world just as Egyptians are...it was not the party and what Michel Aflaq wanted, it was his own sense of becoming the leader of the Arab world, after all in his own thinking, it was he who stood against the ancient enemy and beat them back (his war with Iran).

i.e. Saddam's career was a desperately grandiose attempt at trying to be Gamal Abdul-Nassir.

* A very distinguished Iraqi Sunni professor at Bagdad University who was tortured by Saddam who got out of Iraq years before the war once said to me something which is perfectly obvious, but sometimes we tend to forget very obvious things. He said there is only one thing in the world that would make the general Sunni population ever get behind Saddam, because for every reason that we know they have been terrorized by him and that is if they though there was a real possibility of the Shiites taking control in Baghdad. That is perfectly obvious but for a diplomat it is important to remember.

true.

* The British with extraordinary technology of their time tried very hard, spoke more Arabic than the current coalition forces, were working within their old former mandate, they had all the maps they knew every place in Iraq from north to south and they could not do it. I think that the reasons that they could not do it are there for anybody to read and the same difficulties have emerged now.

very true, Iraq was built on a sectarian basis but America needn't entrench it : the Americans should have done their homework

* The difference between Hafiz and Saddam: Completely different, people around President Assad respected his power. Assad was the Eastern Mediterranean, a Levantine; he could be extremely charming which is interesting coming from a very disadvantaged background as he was in every way. He had a great deal of self confidence, he was charming, he could have been a Beirut hostess, he could be genuinely amusing, he always spoke Arabic although I knew from his pilot training he must know some English. Assad was much too subtle and smart to want people to say yes to him all the time. my life as a diplomat in Syria was as free as it would have been in Beirut, o doubt people were watching us and knew where we were but no Syrian would think twice about inviting me to their house, I never entered an Iraqi house except once and that was for a cultural event. Saddam when you were with him there was this huge tension in the air because everybody in the room from his own staff was afraid of him and I never heard him make a joke but if he would have, everybody would have laughed. It was a completely different aura. In Iraq, it was much more frightening.

Full interview (English) [a little difficult to read, pargraphs are stuck together and there are many grammar issues.]

Nir Rosen Congress Testimony

But the American ideologues who saw themselves as liberators needed an evil worthy of their lofty self image. To them the Baath party was a Sunni Nazi party that ruled Shiite Jews. They would de-Baathify just as their role models had de-Nazified. Sunnis were suspect of loyalty to the former regime and as a result the American military adopted a more aggressive posture in majority Sunni areas, resulting in clashes in places like Falluja that indeed led to the formation of a powerful popular resistance. Sunnis were weakened by the fact that Saddam, a Sunni himself, from attaining too much popularity or power, to avoid rivals.
That first month of Occupation there was enormous hope, but the looting created an atmosphere of pervasive lawlessness from which Iraq never recovered. The entire state infrastructure was destroyed and there were no security forces, Iraqi or American, to give people a sense of safety. They quickly turned to inchoate militias being formed, often along religious, tribal and ethnic lines.
Those same militias dominate Iraq today. This would have happened anywhere. If you removed the government in New York City, where I am from, and removed the police, and allowed for the state infrastructure to be looted and then you dismissed the state bureaucracy you would see the same thing happen. Soon Jewish gangs would fight Puerto Rican gangs and Haitan gangs would fight Albanian gangs.

The most powerful militias belong to Shiites who rallied around populist symbols such as Muqtada al Sadr. The Americans then fired the entire state bureaucracy, and for some Shiite leaders, this was an opportunity to seize control. While many Sunni clerical and tribal leaders chose to boycott the occupation and its institutions, many of their Shiite counterparts made a devil’s bargain and collaborated. The Americans maintained their sectarian approach, unaware that they were alienating a large part of Iraqi society and pitting one group against the other. Most of the armed resistance to the occupation was dominated by Sunnis, who boycotted the first elections, effectively voting themselves out of Iraqi politics. Radical Sunni militants began to attack Shiites in revenge or to provoke a civil war and disrupt the American project. Sectarian fundamentalist Shiite parties dominated the government and security forces and punished Sunnis en masse. By 2005 the civil war started. Later that year the Americans realized they had to bring Sunnis into the fold, but it was too late, the Shiites in power saw no reason to share it.

Probably a little exaggerated, but the point is that America designed its war as a sectarian war, a war that unwittingly and needlessly entrenched dangerous sectarian modes of thinking in the collective Iraqi consciousness [a good example is me, just trace the development of my sectarian awareness on this blog] while this sectarian divide has a long and turbulent history ; it needn't necessarily come to all this blood : Christians have persecuted Jews too, you know? America could have kept the bureaucracy and started nation-building from there, don't get me wrong, the problems of Iraq are all purely Iraqi problems, but I would never forget the words of the first US soldier I met: "Hey man, are you Sunni or Shi'i?", that was the first time I was asked this question. it is the arrogant American administration's neglect of the complex realities regarding post-Saddam Iraq that is still the first thing that must be blamed for all the bad things happening in Iraq.

Full testimony here.

Underestimating Muqtada

I saw al-Maliki yesterday on what is supposedly the mouthpiece of the government, al-Iraqiya TV, al-Maliki had a very good bark, I was impressed, he was as pissed off as he was three days ago when he likened he Sadrists to al-Qaeda, sporting an unshaven workaholic look to boot, he was talking about the need to plant democracy through force, ballots-not-bullets and integrity, unfortunately for all of us, and as I expected ; what he sells is just bark with not much bite. I've seen al-Maliki on interviews before, he has got the stern, serious look going but he can roll you a a nice bullshit cigar or two to smooth things over, for all his bravado about going rabid mofo on the militias, all it took was a negligent BOO! from Battal Atari al-Najaf , who waited for six days, via Qum to bring the bravado of the Dawlat to a shameful standstill.

Hey, if al-Maliki is indeed capable of saying what he says is going to do, then I'm all for this guy by all means, the Sadrists, with their strongly supernatural bent and retrograde barbarism isn't something you can negotiate with, let alone be secure in having along in building a meaningful democracy. Unfortunately, the reality on the ground is nowhere near what Mr. Maliki is talking about, he arrested the head of Tharallah, an independent militia today, okay, so you got a petty milita, but I would only approve of what you're doing when you get the Sadrists, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. the Sadrists are way, way more powerful.

Remember when I posted about our Kia driver Omar's Odyssey? During that trip, Omar passed a checkpoint of the Iraqi Army, when he told them that his brothers were taken by JAM, they immediately tucked their tails, told him they're staying out of this one and let him pass. This image matches what happened at Basra, IMO, I didn't know the Badrists were such pansies, but then again, the only thing the people of Sadr City were famous for back when it was still called Thawra was this: they're the toughest dudes on the block, I might even go further and say that they're the dirtiest mofos in the whole Middle East, having been through numerous wars, and judging by the difference between a regular Lebanese and a regular Iraqi, they'd eat up Hezbollah anytime (provided that they have the same years of training of course). The more Iranian-fed Badrists still need to grow the set of balls required to tackle on the notorious streetwise JAM.

JAM's power is today even recognized by America, who dismissed him as a thug in 2004 but are now calling him "Sayyid Muqtada", while many Iraqi Shia have no love for JAM, they view their presence as necessary, it is JAM who was doing things for the Iraqi Shia, providing all sort of civil services, not to mention its populist expression of wrath and Shia power against Sunnis and their insurgency post-Samarra explosions. In other words, Shia fear JAM, they abhor its oppressive streak that sometimes mimics al-Qaeda, but they also need it, because the government is weak and ineffective.

This is a good article, I can't vouch for it entirely, I'm skeptical of the notion that the Iraqi Army is nothing but what we used to call the Badr Brigade, but one does wonder how did the Badr Brigade clean up its act so quickly back when Harith al-Dhari[t] was going shrill in 2005 about their Sunni-drilling pastimes, before their comeback as the sober, sheepishly innocent "Badr Organization"

I'm surprised that there are people who can still wrinkle out a positive spin from this ; just type Basra or Iraq in Google News and behold pandemonium itself. Of course, one should always take into account the loyalties and the backgrounds of the news sources, but such a depressing pandemonium is unarguable, I myself rooted for the surge itself in its early days as the last hope, but as the haze clears you can't help but call a spade a spade, or a civil war a civil war, or the Iraqi Army the Badr Brigade.
the Iraqi government claims repeatedly that the attack was targeting only prepared lists of renegades, rogues and criminals who may "claim" to be affiliated with the Sadrists, however, a congruent reading of all the Sadrist, Badrist, Shi'i websites and general news reports clearly indicate that the same old rivalry Middle-class Da'wa-ISCI/lower-class Sadrists feud is a significant portion of what's happening there.

Loyal Student Fatass Himself appeared on al-Jazeera Saturday, with its boneheaded orthodox Arab-Islamic logic al-Jazeera is notorious between Shi'is as an anti-Shi'i station, so that was like whoa, lesh? he was interviewed by Ghassan bin Jidou, a Tunisian married to a Shi'i Lebanese. Angry Arab said that he was impressed by Fatass's new PR skills, I disagree, clearly Abu Khalil isn't an avid follower of Muqtada al-Sadr as Iraqis, Muqtada is still pretty much the same funny turban-on-a-clown creature I laugh about with my family on YouTube, he still has rotten gargari-persuaded teeth (although somewhat barely visible in the interview), but what caught my attention is the strangely detached, dazed and distinctly canine look in Muqtada's eyes, something that immediately brought back to my memory the drunken ramblings of one Uday Hussein the Iraqi TV used to interrupt the Friday Afternoon Movie. It's uncanny!

Muqtada is an easy man to make fun of, with his extremely crude speech, the habibi and the repetitive uh grunt, but if you excuse his Fish Market mannerisms, you can find that he's coming from some sort of a tangible idea. Here are things that he said which I find interesting, (full Arabic interview on al-Jazeera YouTube channel):

* Our first goal is and have always been to liberate Iraq from occupation.
* I am in complete control of the majority of the Mahdi Army. (something validated twice with his call for cease-fire, which gave the Americans much of their surge success, and his ceasefire command in the Battle of Basra)
* It is not in my hands to [disband, he literally said freeze] the Mahdi Army is an ideological party founded on the idea of the Savior, in all religions there is a savior, and this army is his, and we yearn to be in his service (note the strong metaphysical and simplistic theories of Muqtada, which are also based on the metaphysical and fantastically-bent ideas of his father, Sadr II, both contrasting the more earthly and realistic ideals of Mohammed Baqr al-Sadr.)
* They won't be able to stop my resistance because I will never allow them to have anything to pin down on me.
* the Iraqi government does not consider resistance of the occupier as terrorism, but they cannot just come out and say it publicly, when we see them in private they tell us to do so, as long as it does not target the Iraqi people.
*Our parliament isn't a parliament, it's a sectarian component based on political deals. It hasn't done anything for the Iraqi people, the government takes care of itself more than it takes care of the people. We used to complain about the dictatorship of Saddam, and our government is doing the same.
* [after being asked about JAM's involvement in Sunni cleansing after al-Askariya shrine], thank you for this question, the Sadrist current has nothing to do with this, I admit that there was a massive popular uprising, and a sectarian atmosphere between Sunnis and Shi'is, and I tried to stop it and I will never accept the murder of any Sunni as long as he is Iraqi. Those things weren't just carried out by JAM, it was a massive Sunni-Shi'i war, JAM is blamed the most because the Sadrist current is the largest, biggest, most effective current in Iraq, so everything is blamed upon it.
* There was a strong Sunni-Sadrist alliance, and I hope that it returns, the occupiers and some factions, managed to distance Shia from Sunnis, or let's say Sadrists from Sunnis.
* Everyone interferes in Iraq, and 99% of these are negative, they send armed cars into Iraq, against the Iraqi people, everyone searches for his own interests.
* Arab and Islamic countries must balance their relationship with the Iraqi government, they must have a relationship with it but they must be careful as it is severely pressured by the occupation, so they must look into matters to see whether their demands are really the demands of the occupation, or not.
* Tells a story about US soldiers planting an IED bomb in a civilian car at a checkpoint, and then blames USA for sectarianism and everything bad in Iraq.
* Sadrists are defenders of Islam, not just in Iraq, but in all the Islamic countries. They would help in any trouble that befalls any Muslim country in any possible matter.
* The struggle in Iraq is a sectarian struggle at large but is really political competition between the politicians.
* I am a Shi'i but incidentally many of my bloc's decisions are Sunni-oriented. This is a good patriotic notion, habibi.
* I do everything in public, when I met with Sayyid Khamenei [of Iran] I told him that we share an ideological line, but I shall not an extension of their political and military line. Iran has done mistakes in Iraq, everyone made a mistake, and Iran must adopt a new agenda that helps Iraqi people.

Anyway, let's wait and see.