Maliki orders closure of protest organizers' offices

NYT: "Two political parties that led demonstrations in Baghdad over the past two weeks said on Monday that security forces controlled by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had ordered them to close their offices.

The actions came amid growing concerns that Mr. Maliki’s American-backed government is using force and other measures to stifle dissent in this fragile democracy, where tens of thousands of demonstrators have seized on the upheaval sweeping the Arab world to rally for government reforms and better services.

Officials for the Iraqi Nation Party and the Iraqi Communist Party said in interviews that dozens of armed security forces had come to their offices here Sunday, two days after another round of demonstrations."

On this the Angry Arab wrote today: "It is hilarious that the New York Times would even bother to cover the one-member party of Mithal Allusi--who is better known as the only Iraqi to support relations with the Zionist entity. In the last puppet elections, Allusi put his idea of relation with Israel to the test. He ran and won...not a single seat in parliament despite what people have observed to be as a very well-funded campaign."

The Angry Arab needs to stop labeling Maliki as a "puppet" of the US when clearly he is not. The Lebanese American professor in California should at least stop calling them "puppet" elections, especially if he's using the results of those elections to corroborate his theory that Mithal al Alusi is not popular in Iraq.

The word "puppet" is another one of those words that some Arab intellectuals like to throw around loosely, like "resistance" and "occupation".

Mithal Alusi wins legal battle

What is wrong with an Iraqi learning from Israel how to defeat terrorists?

IRAQ: Iraqi lawmaker wins in fight over Israel visit

'Iraqi lawmakers, who have become enraged with fellow parliament member Mithal Alusi for his visits to Israel, now have another reason to be angry with the fiery politician. Alusi hired Iraq's leading constitutional lawyer to fight the legislature's attempt to punish him for visiting the Jewish state, and today, he won.

That means Alusi, a secular Sunni Muslim who frequently criticizes Iraq's Shiite-led government, no longer faces prosecution for traveling outside Iraq or for having visited Israel, most recently in September when he attended a terrorism symposium at an academic institute. Upon his return from Israel -- his third trip there since 2004 -- Iraq's parliament erupted in angry debate over what to do about Alusi, who has accused many leading Iraqi politicians of being stooges of Iran.

The session ended with a vote to strip him of his parliamentary immunity and to pursue criminal charges. Alusi immediately threatened to fight the decision in court. His lawyer, Iraqi constitutional expert Tariq Harb, took up the case two days later. Reached by phone today, Harb said the trial lasted two months before the supreme federal Court and that he based his case on a provision of Iraq's Constitution, Article 44. It guarantees Iraqis freedom to travel where they want.

"Removing the immunity is violating the constitution and the Iraqi law," said Harb. This morning, the court found in favor of Alusi, who was reported to be traveling and unavailable for comment.

"I am happy for two reasons here," his lawyer said. "One is because I won the case. And the second is that this proves the Iraqi judiciary is independent, and there is no influence of the executive, legislative or government authorities on it. We have a courageous and daring judiciary," he said.'

-- Saif Rasheed and Tina Susman in Baghdad

Mithal al Alusi

Mithal al Alusi survives another assassination attempt.

Talisman Gate: Alusi Survives Yet Another Assassination Attempt

"Liberal Iraqi MP Mithal Alusi’s family home in West Baghdad's Hai Al-Jam’ia neighborhood was reduced to rubble this morning after terrorists had rigged the structure with explosives in an apparent assassination attempt. Alusi, a Sunni, had been leading in recent weeks the drive to repatriate internally displaced Shia and Sunni families back to their neighborhoods in Western Baghdad.

A couple of days ago, Alusi visited the house that his late father, a college professor, had built in the 1970s but did not enter the premises. There is a ‘Sons of Iraq’ checkpoint manned by ex-insurgents directly across from the house. An investigation as to the causes of their negligence (surprise, surprise) is underway by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.

Today’s event is a reminder that men such as Alusi, whose two sons were killed in a previous assassination attempt in February 2005, are still active in Iraqi politics and had never given up on the country despite being embattled and unfunded. He always stood for a secular and non-sectarian patriotic agenda, one that is being emulated by many Iraqi politicians now. It is even being parroted by the Consensus Bloc that rejoined Maliki's cabinet a couple of days ago. They have come a long way since their previous candidate for the Ministry of Culture fled Iraq over a year ago--with U.S. official connivance--ahead of an arrest warrant charging him with the murder of Alusi's sons."

Continued

Mithal al Alusi

I have posted a few articles about Mithal Al Alusi. I'm watching him now on a talk show called El Mukhtasar ('The Summary') on Baghdadia. The more I listen to Alusi, the more I like him. He talked about the murder of his sons and said that three key witnesses to the murder have been attacked - two were murdered and one is in the hospital. Alusi criticized Nouri al Maliki for not doing anything and challenged him to step up and be the leader that Iraqis expected him to be.

Adnan Dulaimi defends Hashemi

I don't think it helps Hashemi that suspected terrorist Adnan Dulaimi is demanding (from Amman, resistance HQ) a halt to legal proceedings against Hashemi!

Sunni Accordance Front Suspends Role in Gov
Dulaimi: Legal Proceedings Against Culture Minister Hashemi Must Halt

The Sunni Accordance Front will suspend participation in the cabinet until the government halts legal proceedings against one of its leading members, the head of the three-party Sunni coalition, Adnan al-Dulaimi, announced Friday.

"We have suspended our membership in the cabinet until the government puts an end to procedures being taken against Culture Minister Asaad Kamal Hashemi," Dulaimi told Reuters by telephone from Amman where he is on a visit.

"We have told our six ministers not to attend cabinet meetings until the government halts these legal steps."

Iraqi security forces attempted to serve an arrest warrant Monday night against Hashemi, charging him with acts of terrorism.

Two suspected militants reportedly fingered Hashemi as the mastermind of a Feb. 8, 2005, ambush against then-parliamentary candidate Mithal al-Alusi, according to governmental spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. Al-Alusi escaped unscathed but two of his sons were killed in the attack.

"The two who planned and carried out the killings of Mithal al-Alusi's two sons confessed that they took orders from him," al-Dabbagh said Monday.

Yesterday, Mithal al-Alusi accused the US embassy of shielding Hashemi from arrest by not ordering security contractors to allow Iraqi police entrance to the al-Rashid hotel, where Hashemi is rumored to be hiding.

Today, the NY Sun reports Alusi planned to hand deliver a letter to the American Embassy in Baghdad Friday, asking President Bush to order Ambassador Ryan Crocker to assist.

US Shielding Culture Minister From Arrest?

Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty
Baghdad, IRAQ: A picture dated 24 June 2007 shows Iraqi Sunni Minister of Culture Asaad Kamal al-Hashemi attending a ceremony in Baghdad to honour journalists who were killed in acts of violence in Iraq.

US Shielding Culture Minister From Arrest?
South American Contractors Reportedly Barred Iraqi Police From al-Rashid Hotel

As'ad Kamal al-Hashemi, the culture minister being charged with acts of terrorism for a 2005 attack on Iraqi MP Mithal al-Alusi which killed his two sons, has been in hiding since Iraqi security forces raided his house in attempt to arrest him on Monday night.


Now Mithal al-Alusi is charging the US embassy with shielding Hashemi from arrest. As Eli Lake reports for the NY Sun:

Mr. Alusi said the wanted man, As'ad Kamal al-Hashemi, had fled to al-Rashid Hotel inside the American-protected international zone in the center of Baghdad. Iraqi national police on Tuesday went to this location, only to be told by the South American mercenaries guarding the al-Rashid compound that they could not enter the grounds of the hotel where Mr. Hashemi was staying. Mr. Alusi then called the office of the American ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, to ask the Americans to order the guards to allow the national police to enter the premises. He was, in so many words, refused.

"I called Ambassador Ryan Crocker's office today and yesterday and they did not give any kind of answer. They are playing with us. They say this is an Iraqi issue, we are not going to be involved. And normally this is a very good attitude, but not when it stops us from arresting terrorists," Mr. Alusi said.

According to Lake, an American officer close to the situation reported that US troops had been ordered by Petraeus to accompany Iraqi forces serving the arrest warrant on Hashemi Monday, but the Pentagon ordered them to turn back en route.

Lakes writes, "On the way to his home, the GIs were ordered to turn around after the Pentagon decided no Americans should be involved in the arrest. 'The order was overturned in Washington,' the officer said."

Can There Be a Liberal Iraq?

This is a good article. Thanks gilgamesh!

Can There Be a Liberal Iraq?
Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi still thinks so.

BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

In September 2004 Mithal al-Alusi, then a director general in Iraq's De-Baathification Commission, attended a counterterrorism conference in Israel. Upon his return to Baghdad he was stripped of his job and threatened with arrest for violating a Baath-era law forbidding contact with the Jewish state. In February 2005 his two sons, Ayman, 30, and Gamal, 22, were gunned down in plain view of their father; credit for the murders was jointly claimed by the Baath Party and Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, an al Qaeda affiliate. The following December Mr. Alusi was elected to parliament as head--and sole representative--of the Iraqi Nation Party.

Mr. Alusi and his party stand for democracy, liberalism, secularism, antiterrorism and national unity. The question for Iraq is: Does anyone stand with Mr. Alusi?

Spend an afternoon in his company and you might yet be persuaded that many Iraqis do, or at least might. Mr. Alusi is in Washington, D.C., to impress his views on administration officials and observe the debate in Congress over additional troop commitments in Iraq. What does he make of that debate? "To be honest, we enjoy how beautiful this democratic system of yours can be, and we might learn from it," he says. Beyond additional U.S. soldiers, economic aid and the equipping and training of Iraq's military, what he most wants from America is intangible: "We need to transfer the values from your society to ours."

More easily said than done, you might think, given the general drift of Iraq's politics over the past four years. Yet the polling data bear him out. Between 2004 and 2006 the number of Iraqis who supported the idea of an Islamic state fell to 22% from 30%, while those agreeing that religion and politics ought to be separated rose to 41% from 27%, according to surveys conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Even in Baghdad, site of so much of the sectarian killing, the number of respondents who put their Iraqi identity ahead of their Muslim one doubled to 60%. (By contrast, only 11% of Cairenes saw themselves as Egyptian first, Muslim second.) And 65% of Iraqis agreed that it was "very important" for Iraq to be a democracy, up from 59% two years before.

Mr. Alusi doesn't cite this data, but he points to anecdotal indicators that give him hope. One is the gradual shift in Arab attitudes toward terrorism. "Something basic has changed," he says, noting that the terrorism that once was directed against Israel and the West has lost its cachet on the Arab street now that Muslims have become its principal victims. Another is the fact that Iraqi soldiers--many of them Shiite--were willing to fight and die alongside American soldiers in recent fighting against Shiite militants. "So, the loyalty to Iraqi institutions did count and the partnership between the Iraqi and American armies did hold."

So why haven't such attitudes translated into better political realities for Iraq? The first leg of the problem, in Mr. Alusi's view, is one of salesmanship. "The main mistake of liberals in the Middle East is trying to speak at too high a level. Liberal values aren't for intellectuals or for the rich. They're for the simple people." Another leg is that Iraq's liberal politicians--he mentions Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi--have spent more time jockeying for cabinet positions than proselytizing for liberal beliefs and organizing grassroots support. A third leg is the media: While sectarian parties such as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa control several newspapers and TV stations, there's no real outlet for liberal ideas. Even the U.S.-sponsored Al-Hurra ("The Free One"), he laments, often seems little better than a facsimile of Al-Jazeera. The fourth leg is a voting system based on party lists, which typically encourages sectarian voting patterns.

That makes it all seem as if the main thing standing between Tocqueville and the Tigris is a bit of message discipline, electoral reform and $100 million for a privately owned liberal media outlet. What about terrorism? Mr. Alusi categorically rejects the idea that there is a civil war in Iraq, pointing out that Sunni and Shiite radicals such as al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army don't actually target each other, but instead bid to gain territory or simply sow chaos by terrorizing civilians. Much of the current violence, he adds, was encouraged by the U.S. troop drawdowns of 2005-2006, which allowed "the terrorists and the Iranians to believe their goals were within reach." Restore U.S. forces to previous levels and deploy them more effectively, he reasons, and the tide may yet be turned.

But the key point, in Mr. Alusi's view, is America's willingness to confront Iran. "You Americans are investing billions of dollars in Iraq," he says. "Three thousand beautiful sons have been killed. But the Iranians are investing in parties and politicians. Their embassy in Baghdad is larger and more active than yours. Their intelligence is moving on the Iraqi street. And they're helping Shiite and Sunni terrorist gangs."

Mr. Alusi's obsession with the Iranian threat might be explained by the fact that he is himself a Sunni. Except he is no less emphatic on the danger posed by the Sunni terrorists who murdered his sons, or Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel. "The same terrorists who are attacking Israeli society are attacking me," he says. And unlike some among the U.S. foreign policy establishment, he refuses to draw fine distinctions between Sunni, Shiite, Baathist, secular, local or global strands of modern-day terrorism. Instead, he lumps them together as an alliance of fascists, intent on using murder to impose their values, which must be confronted with an equally tenacious alliance against terrorism. "If America loses its will [in this fight] there won't be peace in the Middle East for 20 years," he warns.

None of this means that Mr. Alusi and his party are going to thrive in the future Iraq. But it is a reminder that the cause of liberalism is not yet dead in Iraq, and that the transfer of values between Baghdad and Washington is not a one-way street. America went to Mesopotamia to spread the gospel of democracy. Mr. Alusi has come to the U.S. to offer an example of courage. A point worth noting amid the speeches of Senators Hagel, Warner and Kerry.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.