IRAQI OIL LONGS TO BE FREE -- IRAQI WOMEN, LESS SO
By Jack Kus

United for Peace of Pierce County
February 15, 2005

        --O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name! --Madame Roland.

In a piece in the Feb. 21 Business Week entitled “Mosque and State: Just How Close?”, we were pleased to note a favorable attitude toward “one of the leading candidates [for the post of prime minister], current Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi.”[1]

Mr. Mahdi is described as “a free marketer favored by U.S. officials despite his affiliation with a religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).”

How can “freedom”-friendly Americans not favor a “free” marketer, after all? And how admirably “free” of bias or prejudice they are, to favor him “despite his affiliation with a religious party.”

Mr. Mahdi is also, it so happens, a man favorable to a “free” trade-friendly petroleum law, -- though sometimes it seems that this is a subject that the mainstream press is not especially “free” to address, always finding some other attractive quality of Mahdi’s upon which to focus.

At the present time, since expectations may have been raised by the president’s State of the Union address with respect to “freedom” in Iraq, public opinion in the U.S. is being prepared to appreciate a few fine distinctions.

To appreciate, for example, the imperative need to exchange Shiite political power to impose sharia law (and is this not, after all, a sort of “freedom” -- yes! -- dictating that men, in general, be “free” of many burdensome “freedoms,” and that women, in general, be even more “free” of them) in return for Western economic influence over Iraqi oil (which, as we know, so much longs to be “free” to flow toward the West in accordance with its nature as a commodity “freely” traded according to the laws of the “free” market by “freely” operating companies in the “free” and sovereign nation of Iraq).

Is this not the subtext of passages like the following one, in Business Week?

“Should the U.S. be worried about these developments? ‘We should watch it,’ says Phebe Marr, an Iraq scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. ‘I think the red line would be clerical domination of the state.’”

We certainly think so, too! we hasten to interject. For such a state would -- heaven forfend! -- not be “free”!

Dr. Marr continues, sharing further reflections with Business Week:

“But she adds that social issues -- from the trivial, such as banning alcoholic beverages, to the important, such as limiting women's rights -- are matters for Iraqis to decide. ‘We said we wanted democracy there,’ she says. ‘This is what happens.’”

Ah, well.

This is what happens.

As Donald Rumsfeld likes to say, “Stuff happens.”

Certainly, stuff happens.

Or, as George W. Bush wrote on that magnificent moment for human “freedom” -- June 28, 2004, at 10:26 a.m. local time, when Iraq became “free”: “Let freedom reign!”

“Freedom” reigns.

Note: We hasten to emphasize that we do not with to suggest that anyone at all has dictated to Phebe Marr what views she should express.  Not at all: she has always enjoyed the utmost in academic “freedom” to speak her mind, as we see from this 2002 summary of her background that appeared in the Naval War College Review: “An Arabist and a leading specialist on Iraq, Dr. Marr has lived and worked in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon and has traveled extensively in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. Dr. Marr received a B.A. in international relations with honors from Barnard College, an M.A. in Middle East studies from Radcliffe Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in history and Middle East studies from Harvard University (1967). She served as a research analyst for the Arabian American Oil Company (1960–62) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and as chair of the Near East and North Africa program at the Foreign Service Institute (1963–66). She has been a fellow of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard and an associate professor of Middle East history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as well as at California State University, Stanislaus. She was a senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, retiring from the U.S. government in 1997. In 1998 and 1999 she was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. Dr. Marr is on the editorial board of the Middle East Journal and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Middle East Institute. She is currently updating her book, The Modern History of Iraq, to be published by Westview Press.” As you can see, she is perfectly “free” to say whatever she truly believes.

1.

The Middle East

MOSQUE AND STATE: JUST HOW CLOSE?
By Stanley Reed

** Iraq’s new government may be more influenced by Islam than the U.S. hoped. **

Business Week
February 21, 2005 (posted Feb. 14)

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_08/b3921079.htm

LONDON -- Is Iraq on its way toward becoming an Islamic state? As the vote-counting winds down from the country's Jan. 30 election, the broad outlines of the outcome seem clear. The largely Shiite group called the United Iraqi Alliance, blessed by Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, will be the largest by far in the 275-seat National Assembly. That puts the Shiites in prime position to influence the choice of a new government and the writing of Iraq's permanent constitution.

But don't expect an Iran-style government dominated by mullahs-turned-politicians. The reclusive 74-year-old Sistani comes from the Quietist school of Shiite scholars, who think it's a mistake for clerics to run the affairs of state -- a view reinforced by the shortcomings of the regime next door in Iran. But the degree to which religion will govern future Iraqi society is still far from decided. Even if the clerics stay out of politics, Iraq may be on the way to a system where religion and religious laws play a bigger role than U.S. policymakers anticipate, possibly thwarting cherished American goals such as broadening women's rights and creating a freewheeling capitalist economy. "The main goal in political Islam hasn't been clerical rule. It has been the replacement of civil law with Shariah, or Islamic canon law. And that is where Iraq is headed," says Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. "The only question is how wide-ranging the substitution will be."

If the Shiite parties allied with Sistani get their way, it's a good bet that religious authorities will gain greater influence. Most specialists think the shift, which is already occurring, will be limited to family and social matters such as marriage, inheritance, and possibly education. It seems unlikely that one community will impose their system on another. Instead, Shiite and Sunni Muslims and Christians may wind up with their own religious family courts.

What's unclear is whether religious influence will spill over into commerce. That would mean measures such as bans on banks charging interest and pressure on those participating in activities considered immoral, such as gambling and the sale of alcohol. The Shiite politicians may want broader strictures on the economy to achieve social justice. Cole thinks they might look askance at the free trading of currencies and the transfer of money out of the country. There's even a text laying out a Shiite view of economics. Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, the founder of Iraq's political Shiite movement who was executed in 1980, wrote a well-known book named Our Economy, which called for regulating the economy by the "moral and ethical values of Islam." Such policy directions, however, will depend on who becomes Prime Minister. One of the leading candidates, current Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, is a free marketer favored by U.S. officials despite his affiliation with a religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Other figures may turn out to be skeptical of unfettered capitalism.

REVERBERATIONS IN IRAN?

Among Iraqis, the debate on Islam's role is gathering steam. Since the election, some have released statements pushing for Shariah law to be the sole basis of Iraq's future constitution and legislation. But on Feb. 8, a Sistani spokesman tried to allay fears by saying that the Ayatollah merely wanted the constitution "to respect the Islamic cultural identity of the Iraqi people." Ghanim Jawad, an official of the Al-Khoei Foundation, a Shiite institution in London, says the Najaf clerical establishment just wants Islam mentioned in the constitution. "That doesn't mean the only source for legislation is Islam," he says. Any greater emphasis on Islam will make many Iraqis uneasy. The Kurds, likely to constitute the second-largest bloc in the Assembly, will resist the application of Islamic law in their area.

Should the U.S. be worried about these developments? "We should watch it," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. "I think the red line would be clerical domination of the state." But she adds that social issues -- from the trivial, such as banning alcoholic beverages, to the important, such as limiting women's rights -- are matters for Iraqis to decide. "We said we wanted democracy there," she says. "This is what happens."

A Shiite-led Iraq could be a wild card in a region whose hidebound regimes, mostly led by Sunni strongmen and monarchs, are under pressure from without and within. Such a change might add to the restiveness of downtrodden Shiite minorities, including the one that inhabits Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province. Already, the fall of Saddam Hussein has been a boost to Iran, energizing the pilgrimage and trade traffic between the two countries. Yet if Iraq proves a more successful model of Islamic-inspired rule than Iran, its example could help undermine the Iranian mullahs.

How Sistani plays his cards will be key. So far it's hard to fault his gamesmanship. Since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the Iranian-born cleric has played the Iraqi nationalist, refusing to meet Americans and insisting on the elections that would bring the Shiites to power. Yet he has also urged his followers not to fight against American forces and cautioned against reprisals for attacks on Shiites by Sunni suicide bombers. Sistani obviously sees the wisdom of acting with restraint -- and the Shiites will have to compromise with other groups to keep Iraq intact. The new National Assembly must choose a three- person presidential panel that will select the Prime Minister, the most powerful job. That will require a two-thirds Assembly majority. The Kurdish coalition and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular grouping, which looks likely to place third in the election, may be power brokers.

One problem for Sistani is that his own group is far from monolithic. Two religious parties form its backbone. The Islamic Da'wa Party has agitated for an Islamic state in Iraq since the late 1950s. The other, SCIRI, is a Da'wa offshoot nurtured by Iran in Saddam's era. But it also includes more urbane personalities, such as Ahmed Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite now making a comeback.

Some Shiite politicians are skeptical that this patchwork group will be able to agree on much beyond protecting the rights of Shiites. "I don't think the Shia are capable of having a unified approach to politics beyond the necessity of removing discrimination," says Ali Allawi, a politician allied with Sistani. "Once the discriminatory structures are removed, the Shia as a politically unified grouping will dissolve." If so, fears of a religious state would ease.

But powerful forces may still keep pushing Iraqi society in a religious direction, whatever shape the constitution takes. Once among the more secular countries in the region, Iraq was taking on a more pronounced religious coloring even before Shiite and Sunni clerics began to fill the postwar vacuum left by Saddam's fall. Militias tied to the religious parties also exert huge influence in some areas. The southern city of Basra, once relatively secular, has come to look a lot like Iran: Women are afraid to go outdoors without headscarves for fear of reprisals from the SCIRI-affiliated Badr brigades, as well as other toughs associated with the firebrand cleric Moqtada al Sadr. For ordinary Iraqis, who rules the streets may for years be more important than what ends up in the constitution.