Iraqi Kurds play untraditional regional game in the struggle for power in Syria

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Sappho

Using every oppor­tu­nity to seize the power to their side play­ing the king­maker role, Iraqi Kur­dish Coali­tion right now plays a deci­sive role in future of Maliki’s gov­ern­ment, but on the regional arena and look­ing to Syria, the Iraqi Kurds became the most impor­tant fac­tor that will change the regional power balance.

Under the medi­a­tion of Kur­dis­tan pres­i­dent Barzani, Syr­ian oppo­si­tion leader Gha­ly­oun visit to Irbil to meet with the Syrian-Kurds oppo­si­tion lead­ers who mis­trust both govt and opposition.

Ghalyoun’s visit is timed with the visit of the Lebanese Samir Geagea the leader of the Chris­t­ian “Lebanese Forces” Party to Kur­dis­tan. The wor­ry­ing thing is that Wahbi Kashita the “Lebanese Forces” Secu­rity and Arma­ment offi­cer joined Geagea in this visit, which sug­gests that all the par­ties involved in these nego­ti­a­tions (Kurds, Lebanese oppo­si­tion and Syr­ian oppo­si­tion) are dis­cussing some kind of mil­i­tary options.

Ghalyoun’s goal is to win the Syr­ian Kurds to his side and Geagea’s goal is to weaken Hezbol­lah by tar­get­ing the Syr­ian govt, but what about Barzani?

Is Barzani’s point of host­ing the most promi­nent anti-Assad fig­ures is to pres­sure the Iraqi gov­ern­ment? Set­ting Kurdistan’s pol­icy inline with Turkey, then this is a dan­ger­ous game because Iran will start to get involved in Kudistan’s inter­nal affairs.

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Qatar’s next target, Mauritania

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Sappho

A visit from the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad, and every­thing went accord­ing to the plan, Qatar and Mau­ri­ta­nia singed at least 12 agree­ment to boost ties between both countries.

But things went ugly when the Sheikh Hamad of Qatar started to “lec­ture” pres­i­dent Mohamed weld Abdel Aziz of Mau­ri­ta­nia on the “reform” and the impor­tance to open a dia­logue with the Islamists move­ment in Mau­ri­ta­nia, par­tic­u­larly Sheikh mohamed alhasan weld ald­edew. The Qatari Sheikh also asked for help to pres­sure the Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad to stop the bloodshed.

Pres­i­dent Aziz of Mau­ri­ta­nia rejected Qatar’s requests, attacked Qatar and expressed his sol­i­dar­ity with the Syr­ian pres­i­dent Assad, say­ing that the so-called rev­o­lu­tions are plots. Leav­ing the coun­try with­out the offi­cial presidential-escort, the Qatari del­e­ga­tion took this as an insult and vio­la­tion to the diplo­matic protocol.

Out of the sud­den, ter­ror­ists and Al-Qaeda mem­bers started to gather Mauritania’s peace­ful and remote cities:

The gath­er­ing of the three [Al-Qaeda] ele­ments in one place has attracted the atten­tion of cen­tral secu­rity agen­cies and warned them that things may not be fine.

A Qatari pre­text to start the Libyan sce­nario in Mauritania?

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“Iraqiya List” tiny split

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Sappho

Pathetic arti­cle on the NYTimes. The way Al-Iraqiya-trio describe them­selves as “nation­al­ists, sec­u­lar and lib­er­als” is a sad indi­ca­tion shows that they are out of touch with the cur­rent world and regional developments.

In less than 24 hours after I sug­gested the divi­sion of Al-Iraqiya List, frag­men­ta­tion already started to take place in Dhi Qar, 14 Al-Iraqiya mem­bers in the south­ern Province announce their split from the mother List and from Allawi’s “Al-Wifaq Al-Watani” bloc, and other Iraqiya mem­bers will fol­low accord­ing to the “State of Law” mem­ber Ali Al-Shalah.

Maliki still nav­i­gates his way among the Iraqi polit­i­cal poles and suc­cess­fully mar­gin­alised the Sadrists after he man­aged to pull the Asa’ib Al-Haq to his side, the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued to crash Al-Iraqiya win­ning the Sunni Anbar tribes announced that he is ready to impale­ment all their demands (most likely, it will never hap­pen, but this promise is enough to silence them for at least a year or more).

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The future political fragmentation of the Sunnis in Iraq

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Sappho

The US ended the mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion of Iraq but its diplo­matic and eco­nomic influ­ence still present, casts its con­se­quences on the future of Iraqi pol­i­tics. In this regard we will see that the com­ing days will wit­ness a polit­i­cal rearrange­ment of Iraq’s for­eign pol­icy towards neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, in other words, the pres­ence of Syria-Iran axis against the GCC-West axis.

The con­se­quence of this strug­gle in the Iraqi arena will have its effects on Turkey and Jor­dan. Both coun­tries will have to review its approach of deal­ing with the event in Syria. Iraq already started to play the axis game, pun­ishes Turkey and Jor­dan refuses to allow the pas­sage to the trade trucks through Jor­dan­ian ter­ri­tory to Turkey in order not to harm the Syr­ian peo­ple, and that is after Turkey and Jor­dan offered asy­lum to Hashimi.

Inter­nally, the impact on the Iraqi Sunni polit­i­cal map will be as follows:

Sunni Islamic par­ties will go for­ward to sup­port the Riyadh-Doha-Washington axis, which will cre­ate divi­sions within the Sunni com­mu­nity Iraq, specif­i­cally the emer­gence of rad­i­cal Sun­nis linked to the event protest Syr­ian, and another Sunni groups who look at the unreast in Syria as a Western-US conspiracy.

As it hap­pened recently in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, for the Iraqiya List, this will lead to the frag­men­ta­tion of the com­po­nents of the List into a small polit­i­cal entities:

- Groups asso­ci­ated with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, most likely to seek coop­er­a­tion with Qatar.

- Groups asso­ci­ated with the Wahhabi-Salafi Islamic move­ments, most likely to seek coop­er­a­tion with Saudi Arabia.

- Sec­u­lar and civil groups, and most likely to seek the coop­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton, Paris, Lon­don and Tel Aviv.

- National and pan-Arab move­ments will seek to con­tinue their ties and rela­tions with the Iraqiya List, and some Nation­al­ist ele­ments from Iraqi National Alliance.

Al-Iraqiya List started to aban­don Al-Hashimi grad­u­ally, agreed that the Vice-President should face trial in Kur­dis­tan, stress­ing on the the inde­pen­dence of the judi­ciary system.

At the same time, Sunni Islamists within Al-Iraqiya (Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) crit­i­cised Allawi’s polit­i­cal man­age­ment of the List. Hashimi’s spokesman attacked Allawi saying:

An appeal to Iyad Allawi .. I hope you retire and leave Iraq to the Iraqi peo­ple to live in peace and har­mony because you are the The worst politi­cian in history.

The dam­age is done and the crack among Al-Iraqiya blocs is already created.

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Muslim Brotherhood and the root of the recent crisis in Iraq

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Sappho

With the recent rise of the Islamists (the Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) “pop­u­lar­ity” in the Arab coun­tries sup­ported by the West, Iraqi Sunni Islamists are dou­ble mar­gin­alised First– by the Shi­ite gov­ern­ment. Sec­ond — by the sec­u­lar lead­er­ship of Al-Iraqiya List.

Real­is­ing that time is ripe to tighten grip on power using the West sym­pa­thy with the Islamists, news reported that the Islamic par­ties within Al-Iraqiya List plan to seize con­trol on the sec­u­lar mem­bers of the List. Islamic Party started a new alliance which includes Rafie al-Issawi, Abdel Karim al-Samarrai, the “Renewal List” and other Iraqi Islamists in order to con­trol the deci­sions of the List, and to mar­gin­alise the sec­u­lar members.

Under the name “Iraqy­oon”, blocs with Al-Iraqiya List already started to group the Islamists with an ini­tia­tive from the Islamic Party.

After a meet­ing with the Turk­ish ambas­sador, there was even an attempt made al-Issawi and Al-Nujaifi (sec­u­lar) to remove Allawi from the Al-Iraqiya’s leadership.

Nor­mally, the Prime Min­is­ter Maliki doesn’t care much about the group­ings and alliances among his rivals, but with the cur­rent regional pol­i­tics a West­ern alliance (includ­ing Turkey) with the Sunni Islamists is a seri­ous danger.

Since the cir­cu­la­tion of these new devel­op­ments (rumors), Maliki placed the Islamic Party (Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) is under his ham­mer. A cam­paign of raids and arrests against the Sunni Islamists made by Baghdad’s Mil­i­tary Com­mand Cen­ter, arrest­ing four Islamists mem­bers of the Islamic Party with charges related to the bomb­ing of the Parliament.

Despite that the Baghdad’s mil­i­tary unite claims of find­ing arms and explo­sives in the Islamic Party head­quar­ter, al-Samarrai leader of the Party rejected these claims.

Pre­vi­ously I said that this cri­sis in Iraq will change the coali­tions, blocs and the whole polit­i­cal map. All what Maliki wants is to break the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s back leav­ing Allawi’s Bloc “Al-Wifaq Al-Watani” alone which easy to han­dle (or ignore).

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Al-Qaeda flag in Syria

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Sappho

After the Span­ish News­pa­per ABC revealed the The Libyan NATO-Rebel are air­lifted to the Syr­ian bor­der in Yebel Zawi (Zawiya Moun­tain). Aljazeera tried to hide the facts report­ing a video of a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against the Syr­ian reg­u­lar army in Zawiya Moun­tain call­ing the rebel the “Free Syr­ian Army”.

Today explo­sion in Syria came after a threat made on “Face­book” by a Syria oppo­si­tion group called “The Vic­to­ri­ous Sun­nis” announced its inten­tion to carry out bomb­ing cam­paign in Dam­as­cus and Aleppo, and advised peo­ple to stay away from gov­ern­ment places in these cities because of the sui­cide operations.

What con­firms the mes­sage above is the Video clip released by the Syr­ian oppo­si­tion shows Al-Qaeda flag in Syria demon­stra­tion (that is the same flag raised in Libya).

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The war of the press conferences

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Sappho

The cur­rent Iraqi cri­sis started bad and turned ugly, but there is one thing I should say: Even a peace­ful solu­tion means many changes in the future polit­i­cal map of Iraq .. in a later post, I will explain why and where?

In his press con­fer­ence Maliki threat­ened to form a polit­i­cal major­ity gov­ern­ment and his right to remove right to remove in his gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to Arti­cle 78 in the Con­sti­tu­tion apply­ing this demand to the Parliament.

In Irbil and a press con­fer­ence by Tariq Al-Hashimi, he ques­tioned the inves­ti­ga­tion about his alleged crimes, say­ing that the arrest war­rant con­tra­dicts arti­cle 93 in the con­sti­tu­tion which says that the “Fed­eral Court” is the insti­tu­tion that spe­cialised in the accu­sa­tions against the State fig­ures and ministers.

Al-Mutlaq, not in a press con­fer­ence but live on Aljazeera said:

This accu­sa­tion is politi­cized and Iraq judi­ciary sys­tem is far from inde­pen­dence.. We want a dia­logue, but not with Maliki [they] can choose another polit­i­cal fig­ure to lead the dialogue.

Allawi and his sim­ple attempt to split the Shi­ites polit­i­cal Blocs, asked the National Coali­tion to with­draw con­fi­dence from Maliki and choose other can­di­date, stress­ing on Al-Hakim idea of a “round table” dia­logue. Al-Hakim and polit­i­cal face Al-Jaafari “blushed” when they heard this “flirt” from Allawi.

After the Kurds refused to deliver Hashimi to Bagh­dad and rejected Allawi’s call to with­draw con­fi­dence from Maliki. Allawi soft­ened his tone against Maliki saying:

I call Maliki to form a com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the charges against Hashimi.

But the root of the cri­sis is not what you think ..

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Iraq crisis is part of the regional conflict and a blow to the Saudi Arabia — Turkey plan

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Sappho

In his critic to West­ern ana­lysts and experts in Arab affairs who try to research each Arab coun­try as a sep­a­rate case away from its nat­ural regional and Arab envi­ron­ment, Iraqi writer Tariq Al-Dulaimi said the fol­low­ing in his arti­cle in Al-Safir today:

West­ern study and analy­sis groups are com­mit­ting more errors and mis­takes to analyse the irrefutable facts on the ground or at least to make min­i­mal efforts to the right pol­icy. . Which linked in one way or another to the regional pol­icy of the neigh­bor­ing countries.

This is why you find those experts are spe­cialised in one coun­try only (Iraq, Syria, Saudi Ara­bia …etc) fail to widen their base analy­sis out the geo­graphic bor­ders. His­to­rian Ian Mor­ris in his book “Why the West Rules — For Now” answered this issue saying:

West­ern approach is to sep­a­rate the inves­ti­ga­tion to the basic data and then treat each case inde­pen­dently. Imple­ment­ing this method in social and polit­i­cal researches can achieve tem­po­rary solu­tions only.

Al-Akhbar’s Elie Chal­houb sees the back­ground of the regional con­flict behind the cur­rent Iraqi crisis:

Saudi Ara­bia and Qatar will not accept an Iraq gov­erned by a Shia fig­ure with such a regional role and weight. Par­tic­u­larly because “the Emir of Qatar knows that US sup­port for Maliki’s ini­tia­tive means pulling the rug out from under his feet on the Syr­ian issue.

We already revealed the Mus­lim broth­er­hood leader Hashimi’s (and the Nujaifi Bros.) con­nec­tions with Turkey and Saudi Ara­bia and the lat­ter already started to pomp the money required to facil­i­tate the cur­rent sep­a­ra­tion move­ments in Iraq.

The funny part is that both coun­tries are work­ing with the Kurds to find a solu­tion for the cur­rent cri­sis. In a tele­phone call between Tal­a­bani and the Turk­ish PM Erdo­gan, Turkey offered to host Hashimi.

Saudi Ara­bia lat­est com­ment on Iraq say­ing that “Iraq’s pol­icy is ambigu­ous” angered the Iraqi gov­ern­ment who answered with:

Riyadh does not want Iraq to return the regional by financ­ing some politi­cians in order to under­mine the polit­i­cal process.

As for Turkey who pro­vided the logis­ti­cal sup­port for the unrest in Iraq. Iraqi MP Adnan Al-Saraj demands an expla­na­tion: Why pro­vided train­ing camp for the Islamic Party and Hashini’s bodyguards?

Maliki made his dif­fer­ences with Turkey very clear in his last inter­view with WSJ, say­ing the following:

but we do not wel­come inter­fer­ence in polit­i­cal mat­ters. Turkey inter­feres by back­ing cer­tain polit­i­cal fig­ures and blocs.

Muham­mad Nour Al-Din sees that Turkey started to gain more ene­mies region­ally and this is a shared view by some Turk­ish writer are not happy with Turkey’s role in the Arab world and Iraq. This is Semih İdiz on Mil­liyet saying:

[Maliki’s] words con­tra­dict the [Turk­ish] gov­ern­ment claims of want­ing to cre­ate a pos­i­tive image … Those [Arabs] who are com­plain about Turkey, their voices started to draw attention.

What are the con­se­quences? .. to be fol­lowed!

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Iraq: arrest warrant for vice-president Al-Hashimi a golden chance for the Kurds

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Sappho

The CIA chief David Petraeus to attend Al-Iraqiya meet­ing yes­ter­day makes you won­der about the US role in the cur­rent unrest in Iraq or even in the bomb­ing and assassinations.

The cri­sis started with the arrest of the body­guards of Vice-President Al-Hashimi [video of their tele­vised inter­view admit­ting their role in the assas­si­na­tion and bomb­ings cam­paigns — 1 — 2] .. He said that Hashimi threat­ened to harm his fam­ily in case he refused to do the “job”.

The rivalry between the two men is not new, but the new is the arrest war­rant issued against Hashimi, travel ban against Mut­laq, and con­fes­sions on of mur­der and terrorism.

Con­trary to the com­mon believe that Maliki’s move will endan­ger the rela­tion between the Sun­nis and Shi­ites. Other Sunni fac­tion such as Al-Iraqiya split group “the White Al-Iraqiya” offered them­selves as a legit­i­mate heir to the “mother List” to fill the vac­uum of Al-Iraqiya’s min­is­ters in the Maliki’s government

AkHashemi, a promi­nent Sunni lead­ers and for­mer leader of the Islamic Party, in less than 24 hours is a fugi­tive. Five judges issued an arrest war­rant against him after the con­fes­sions of sup­port­ing terrorism.

Kur­dish leader Barzani always inter­vene at the right time called for an urgent national con­fer­ence before the col­lapse of the polit­i­cal process. The last phrase has its sig­nif­i­cance to Maliki and the National Alliance.

The Par­lia­ment is dis­abled, the gov­ern­ment has become semi-paralyzed. If Maliki does not respond to Barzani’s invi­ta­tion, the Kurds will with­draw from the polit­i­cal process which will lead to the fall of Maliki gov­ern­ment which means a new elec­tion. This option is a golden oppor­tu­nity for the Kur­dish region to declare its inde­pen­dence under the global sit­u­a­tion which allows every­thing. unless Al-Hashimi accepts the offer to go to exile .. to be followed

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The beginning of the end of the US sponsored “Iraq State” project

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Sappho

The pace of exchang­ing accu­sa­tions among Iraqi polit­i­cal par­ties started to esca­late since the US mil­i­tary with­drawal began, Mut­laq called PM Malikia “Dic­ta­tor” and gov­ern­ment accused Vice-president Hashimi with plan­ning to assas­si­nate the PM. There is some­thing going on behind the scene and for the first time Al-Iraqiya List ful­filled its promises and decided to sus­pend its par­lia­ment par­tic­i­pa­tion “for real”.

Asked the Par­lia­ment to with­draw con­fi­dence from his deputy Al-Mutlaq and more indi­ca­tions shows that Maliki is plan­ning to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion with Al-Iraqiya lead­ers [who are con­nected to Turkey and Saudi Ara­bia] order­ing armored vehi­cles to sur­round the homes of Vice-President Hashemi and Al-Iraqiya leader, Finance Min­is­ter Al-Issawi in the Green Zone.

As it called the first visit of Maliki to Wash­ing­ton as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a “sov­er­eign State”, notice that Maliki neglected all Al-Iraqiya lead­ers when he formed his del­e­ga­tion to the US.

since the US who played a piv­otal role in such crises is no more, Hashimi headed to Kur­dis­tan asked Tal­a­bani to play the medi­a­tor role, and Mut­laq headed to the US Ambas­sador to “explain” the cur­rent polit­i­cal crisis.

There­fore, the with­drawal will affect the polit­i­cal process, which is pro­duced and spon­sored by the US. The next phase will wit­ness the begin­ning of the end of “Iraq State project”.

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