The Big Day is here!

Good morning everyone, or good evening depending on where you live!

It’s 7:45 am now in Baghdad and the voting centers inside Iraq were open on time 45 minutes ago.
The first news clips broadcast on local TV showed people voting as early as 7:05!
Also politicians and government officials have started casting their ballots in a special station located inside the Green Zone. The first politician we saw vote on TV were Mithal al-Alusi who leads a list of his own and Dr. Hussein al-Shahristani from the UIA.

The first wave of our special reports from eight Iraqi provinces-in addition to Baghdad-will start coming to you in a few hours so keep an eye on Pajamas for the full coverage.

Now excuse me while I go vote!

Drinking water poisoned in Baghdad?!

Right now I’m listening to at least two or three voices from distant loudspeakers (possibly from mosques’ minarets) telling the residents in the north eastern part of Baghdad to strictly avoid drinking tap water because “the water has been poisoned”!

It could be just a rumor or it could be part of the all-out-war waged by al-Qaeda on Iraqis on the election eve.

I hope it turns out to be just a rumor...

Update:

Residents in other regions of Baghdad have also heard the warning but till now there are no reports on any casualties.
I have received a call from a friend who’s a doctor on night call in Baghdad’s medical city and he confirmed that they haven’t administered any water-poisoning cases tonight.

So it’s probably a mere rumor.

Just now al-Iraqia TV confirmed that the whole thing is untrue, according to a statemnet from the ministry of health.

Election Coverage Announcement!

If everything goes as planned for tomorrow, Pajamas Media and ITM will be hosting extensive coverage of the parliamentary elections in Iraq.

Eight correspondents based in eight different Iraqi provinces will be submitting several waves of election updates and photos exclusive to Pajamas Media.
Mohammed and I will also be doing our usual reporting tomorrow and this large amount of reports will be cross-posted on ITM and Pajamas.
The eight provinces are: Erbil, Kirkuk, Mosul, Babil, Najaf, Kerbala, Samawa, Basra as well as Baghdad of course.

The correspondents' name will be hidden and only initials will be used for reasons concerning their personal safety. Journalists and reporters in Iraq had been targeted by the terrorists many times and we have granted our correspondents' request to refer to them by initials only.

Stay tuned!

It's only a matter of hours now!

Now it’s 6 pm in Baghdad and the curfew has officially started. Actually streets in Baghdad were technically empty all day except for people carrying badges or emergencies.

We are hearing sporadic gunfire from time to time and sometimes we hear some explosions but there are no reports of a major incident.
Almost every Iraqi is at home now looking excitedly and anxiously at tomorrow’s event and words like election, vote or list are in every conversation among any two Iraqis.

All candidates have entered an “electoral silence” which means that all campaigning activities have virtually stopped.
No papers were printed this morning and officials from the IECI are on TV all the time giving instructions to the voters and the lists and urging the people to report on any incident of fraud of violence they happen to know about.

With joy, worry, fear and hope I await tomorrow. Our hearts beat fast hurrying the clock to bring us faster to the other shore.

Tomorrow it’s going to be us who decide and I can feel the greatness of the responsibility because the result will draw the shape of our future and will determine how long it will take till we can announce victory in this war; our war against the past, against the past’s illusions and the past’s mistakes; with our hands we can make this war last shorter… with our own choices.

One year ago we wanted to defeat terror and the shadows of dictatorship and tell them that we are not willing to go backwards and that we’re ready to build a new Iraq where the people choose their representatives…
The choice didn’t matter then as much as voting itself did; all we wanted to do was to go and cast our votes regardless of the choices we made.

Yesterday we were sitting together with our friends talking and discussing our points of view. We found that our ambitions are way bigger than the mere idea of voting or practicing our right to elect, now we feel that our votes are a responsibility and a heavy one.
We are hesitant and worried about our choices and maybe the opinion polls results that we’ve seen-or at least from what I hear from people I meet-indicate that there’s a higher percentage than normal of people who haven’t made up their mind yet on who to vote for.

Me and my friends were sitting discussing “who’s best for Iraq?” and the reasons on which each one of us based his/her opinion. I was seeing a drastic change in the sense of the historic responsibility we shoulder.
I see my friends call their friends and acquaintances encouraging them to vote for this candidate or that list and putting effort in convincing them with this or that idea.

In a matter of one year questions and answers changed a lot; less than a year ago the question was “will you vote?” But now the question is “who are you going to vote for?”
We are making progress, definitely we are!

Anyway, I see most of Iraqis making their choices by comparing the names at the top of the lists while there’s an educated minority who look at lists as a whole but either way it is all fine, we’re still carrying much of the totalitarian heritage from the past decades. Here we have a proverb that says ‘health comes in steps” and the thousand mile journey starts with a step, you know.
It is unfair to consider time our enemy; yes, we are a bit slow in absorbing the new reality but do not blame us for being slow; we have lived long enough under the reign of a devil who filled our ears and minds with wrong beliefs and ideas and the sunshine we see now will certainly confuse our first steps.
There were researches and reports that said “Iraqis are optimistic about their future” and I don’t think our readers here were surprised by that but I’m sure those who used to criticize us for being optimistic were surprised if not shocked.
Yes, our present is rough and bloody but don’t we have the right to dream of a better future?!
The pessimists had facts to rely on and we also have facts on which we build our attitude but we try to see beyond the smoke of the battle.
We don’t have a wand or something and we know nations do not build their history overnight but we believe we are walking the right path.
They say the people can be fooled once but they cannot be totally corrupt…and one or two rounds of elections are not enough but we have no better choice than to keep trying and to listen to what the people say.
Maybe we’re not smart enough to learn from others’ mistakes but Iraqi’s are capable of learning from their mistakes and correct the path.

I’ll go and vote tomorrow and I will be adding one more brick to the building.
I’m very proud of my nation for it didn’t surrender in spite of all what it’s been through; this nation is fighting, deciding, challenging, falling and rising and trying to learn.

Now do you see that Weblog Awards logo to the right?
Well it's not just for decoration you know! It's an honor for us to have it there and a measure for us of how well we are providing blogposts that make a difference for readers.
I'm frankly confused (and a bit disappointed) that the total votes in this category in an entire week are hardly higher than the daily hits this blog alone gets.
Now come on and vote and show these bloggers that you care, and don't forget, you can vote once every 24 hours!

Iraqis abroad cast their votes!

Voting outside Iraq has begun for 1.5 million registered voters living in 15 countries. Those voter's ballots will decide much of the 45 compensatory seats in the future parliament.
The first votes were cast in Australia then Jordan, UAE, Syria, Iran and several countries in Europe.

The Iraqia TV reporter from Berlin said that turnout was pretty good today considering that it is not in the weekend like it was back in January. (Early voting in Berlin:VIDEO)
It is also reported that turnout level in Amman/Jordan were hundreds of thousands of Iraqis live are above what was originally anticipated. Similar good news is also coming from Dubai/UAE and Lebanon and they all say that turnout is higher than it was last time.

In the London’s office there were some troubles in the past few days; a conflict erupted between some Kurds and Islamists loyal to the UIA and each team was trying to take over the office and get more of the important positions. The IECI condemned these acts and described the incident as “occupying the office by people who do not believe in the principles of the IECI and firing the legitimate officials…”
However, it seems that the conflict was solved as the early news clips coming from London showed. The process looked smooth and neat and although all parties will have to stop campaigning as of 7 am Wednesday morning (correction to yesterday’s post) the administration of the main office in London prohibited any campaigning activities 100 meters from the door of the office.

.

In another regard, there has been a dispute over voter registration in Kirkuk where 200,000 new voters have been added to the lists, most of them are Kurds who were expelled during the 1980s.
Turkmen and Arabs raised several objections accusing the Kurds of trying to change the demography of this vital province.
Local observers estimate the actual number of Kurds who have the right to return to Kirkuk by 60,000 and they say that 200,000 is a much exaggerated figure.

The IECI announced that the papers of those 200,000 voters will be verified again and if they show the required papers and IDs that prove they’re from Kirkuk, then they will be allowed to vote in this province.

Security wise, the ministry of interior announced that it has been arranged with the authorities in Jordan to allow 100 humanitarian cases to pass the closed borders every day.
Mizhir al-Dulaimi who headed a list from Ramadi was assassinated yesterday. Members of his list and some other Sunni parties are accusing the Badr brigade of being behind the assassination but that’s probably not a legitimate accusation because Ramadi is a pure Sunni city and Badr has no power in it.
Actually it is more likely that the assassination was carried out by al-Qaeda who warned from participating in the election two day ago.
It is well know that al-Qaeda has a strong base in Ramadi so accusing them will be much more logical.
Al-Dulaimi was a supporter of the “Iraqi resistance” and he insisted more than once that this resistance has to be distinguished from terrorism. He also declared from Cairo during the reconciliation conference that there were certain parties in the government who were planning to arrest him when he returns to Baghdad.

On the other hand, Mr. Haider al-Sadr was kidnapped along with two of his escorts and the convoy of MP Jalal Addin al-Sagheer was attacked by a roadside bomb but he survived the attack.

The second man in the National Accord Front Mr. Tariq al-Hashimi urged the “Iraqi resistance” to stop all their military operations to let the elections take place in peaceful environment…I hope they listen.

My first blogjam!

Less than 30 minutes from now, I'll be joining a Pajamas Media blogjam about Saddam's trial.
There will be other fine bloggers participating; Glenn Reynolds, David Korn, Kenneth Anderson, Jim Bennett and Austin Bay.

The voting has begun! (updated)

Voting in Iraq’s second parliamentary elections has begun this morning; this coincides with the deadline for all campaigning activities by all lists and parties who are required now to enter “electoral silence”.
The first votes are coming from army bases, detention centers and hospitals.




The presence of representatives from different political bodies was strong in the voting centers we have seen on TV so far.





The political bodies used SMS technology for campaigning for the first time; more than 20 lists and parties sent hundreds of thousands of messages via cell phones throughout the country; I for instance received one of those messages.

Another form of propaganda war has been used recently; rumors were used to spread false news about several lists withdrawing from the election or joining larger lists.
Local media brought several such news headlines only to refute soon after, for example it was reported that three mainly Shiit lists-the 15th of Sha’ban movement, the Dawa movement and the Independent Technocrats list- have joined the UIA or withdrawn from the election for the benefit of the UIA. But the leaders of at least one of these lists appeared on TV to say that nothing like that happened.

The latest clarification from Ayatollah Sistani’s office was met by relief from many politicians and parties who were worried about having to compete with a list endorsed by the clergy.

The IECI made a request to the defense ministry and the multinational forces to suspend all military operations especially in Mosul and Anbar and it was reported that this request was answered by a promise from both parties to limit military operation to self-defense.

Also in this regards Al-Sabah published an interview with Abdul-Hussein al-Hindawi a senior IECI official in which he shed light on the state of preparation for the elections:
Regions Anbar province were classified into three categories:
1-Fallujah and eastern Ramadi: All voting stations will be open.
2-The rest of Ramadi: In this relatively unsafe region some voting stations will not be open.
3-Western Anbar: Hit, Husayba and Qaim, most stations will not be open.
Overall, 160 out of 207 offices will be functional on the 15th in Anbar.
In Mosul it is expected that all stations and offices will be functional. The governor of Mosul Dr. Kashmoola expected a 85% turnout in the province.
Mr. Hindawi said that the EU, the Islamic Conference and the Arab League “didn’t answer our requests for sending in envoys to monitor the election” but he also added that there will be 780 internationals to monitor the process and that a special team from the UN assist in counting the votes with the aid of a special computer system.

When asked about the expected turnout, Hindawi expected an overall rate of 68%.

The Iraq without violence network revealed that they have counted more than 220 incidents of electoral violence, most of which concentrated in the middle and southern regions of the country and they were mostly cases of tearing campaign posters and signs and were recorded against individuals rather than lists or parties.

Tomorrow Tuesday, voting will start for Iraqis outside Iraq in 521 stations in 108 voting centers hosted in 38 cities in 15 countries and on Thursday 7,000 candidates will compete in the nationwide elections, ballots will be cast in 6,200 centers totaling 32,000 stations overseen by nearly a hundred thousand monitors.

Isn't that exciting!

Update:

The IECI office in Babil announced that this morning more than 6000 policemen, 1700 soldiers, 500 detainees and prisoners and 650 administered patients have cast their votes.
In this province there are 660 candidates from 78 different lists are competing for the province’s 11 seats.
On Thursday, 749,000 voters will have the chance to cast their votes in 1581 station located within 273 centers under the supervision of 10,250 officials and in the presence of 20,000 representatives of political bodies.

Elections update.

We were thinking of taking a day off from blogging but there are some new developments concerning the upcoming elections that I think are important.

There have been several press conferences in Baghdad today for many of the heads of major lists and political parties.
The first one I saw was for Abdulaziz al-Hakeem head of the UIA. Al-Hakeem expressed his concern over the possibilities of fraud.
He apparently wasn’t worried about fraud in the thousands of voting station pread all over the country but he is more afraid from fraud in the main offices of the IECI when the boxes reach the headquarters and computers start handling the counting.

“There were serious incidents of fraud in the January elections” said al-Hakeem, a much unexpected thing to hear from the biggest winner in that round of elections!
This could be aiming at preparing the atmosphere for future complaints and conspiracy theories if his lists loses because logically, there are less chances for fraud to happen the closer we move to the center where monitoring is at its highest and strictest level.
Abdulaziz told his supporters that they “should not allow the loss of any single vote”. This makes one feel that the UIA are getting aware of the tough competition they’re about to face from other lists, particularly from Allawi.

Allawi had a press conference too, nothing impressive or new. He again emphasized the extreme importance of this election for Iraq and he urged Iraqis to be very careful in their choices. In my opinion he was trying to say “do not listen to what clerics say and follow your brains”.

It is noticed that so far, Allawi is the only candidate who is leading a professional campaign, and I mean really professional; the TV ads, the posters and the signs are very well produced and the words are carefully chosen and they’re attracting good attention among the people here.

On the other hand, Tariq al-Hashimi, the head of the Islamic Party and the number 2 man in the National Accord Front condemned the declaration of emergency law in Anbar and Mosul and also criticized the composition of the IECI saying that sectarian, ethnic balances in the staff of the IECI had been changed to serve the interests of certain parties.

Laith Kubba, spokesman for PM Jafari but who’s currently leading his own list of “National Peace” expected the four major lists-UIA, Allwi, National Accord and the Kurdish alliance-expected them to win around 200 seats in the parliament which I think is pretty a close estimation to what I also expect to happen.

An important statement came from Ayatollah Sistani’s office, the statement is endorsed by the top four Shiit clerics-Sistani, Mohammed al-Hakeem, Ishaq al-Fayad and Basheer al-Najafi-and it stated that the Ayatollahs do not favor any particular list over the others discrediting the previous reported statement in which Sistani allegedly urged the voters to avoid secular and small lists and vote for the religious candidates.
The document made clear that any statement not signed/stamped with the Ayatollah’s signature or his office’s stamp must not be considered authentic.

Preparation and security wise, the government announced a 6-day vacation starting on Monday and traveling between provinces will be banned from Monday through Friday too, vehicles will be banned from traffic starting on Wednesday the 14th.

Meanwhile, there was a security meeting for security officials in the nine southern provinces of Iraq to put a plan to “secure the election process”.
This could be true but also it is possible that this security plan is the first step in creating the “state of the south” as a prophylactic measure incase the UIA loses in the elections.
Add to this that there was a “coup attempt” in the defense ministry lately, Azzaman reported that people in the government applied pressure on the defense minister to fire 13 Kurdish commanders and high ranking officers including the chief of staff General Babakir Zibari. However this attempt was halted after “political contacts at higher levels were made to solve the crisis”.

Salih al-Mutlaq from the National Dialogue front had his own press conference too; al-Mutlaq who represents a secular pan-nationalist trend criticized both Sunni and Shiit lists for using religious symbols and clergies in their campaigns.

Moving to the issue of monitoring the election, the European Union has decided not to send election monitors; instead they will send three members of the European parliament to be in Baghdad during the election.
In the same regard, the “Ain” Iraqi election monitoring NGO said today that they have recruited 15,000 volunteers to monitor the process and that they will adopt the cross-monitoring system which means they will be sending people from the north to work in the south, from the east to work in the east and so on to make sure that people who monitor the process will not be affected by regional, sectarian or ethnic emotions.

That’s all for election news today and congratulations to the Iraqi national soccer team on winning the West-Asia league cup after beating Syria 3-2!

Just a reminder; the deadline for the Iraq the Model banner contest which we announced two weeks ago will be extended for two days more than it was originally planned.
We will continue to accept submissions of suggested banners until December 16 and next day we will put the five designs that we select as the best five for your nominations.
So far we have received more than 15 designs and many of which are pretty good that it is quite difficult to choose the best five!

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to make a contribution.

Time for some photoblogging, today it’s about election posters in Baghdad. Enjoy:



The entrance to a tunnel, plenty of space that wasn’t utilized last time. What a waste!


The poor house owner, he will have to repaint this wall, his only fault is that he built his house on a busy street.


Three layers of posters on the same wall here.
Hey, isn’t this guy handsome? This guy is one of Iraq’s former soccer stars. He scored our only goal in the 1986 world cup against Belgium, will he score a goal in the elections?


A twister must have passed by this wall, or is the wall being prepared for a new load of posters?


Turbans, lots of them!


Fence for cloth, paper for bricks…don’t they say paper wraps rock?!


A brick wall or an old cable roll, I’m pasting these posters anyway.



Security concrete walls are a place of choice for people in the business.


Posters in the background, posters in the bus stop, signs on the lamp post. And by the way, who smokes French cigarettes?


Little space, better than nothing!


Err, well I guess this one was more for the chicks than it was for the posters.


Quick, grab the glue can, the house master will come out that door in any second!

One more week to go!

Last night we had made a report on the different electoral circles in Iraq and we stated our expectations on the distribution of votes. The report was posted on Pajamas Media. Take a look!

Elections are only one week away, the preparations are taking shape and the competition intensifies among the candidates and lists and I’ll try here to illustrate the most significant of the latest developments reported by a variety of local news outlets.

Mr. Aa’dil al-Lami the administrative manager of the IECI (Independent Iraq Election Commission) revealed in a conference with election monitoring teams that many wrongful information were found in the applications submitted by people applying to be election stations officials.

Al-Lami said that serious measures will be taken to expose and prevent corruption from happening. Meanwhile the IECI announced that they have so far registered 70,584 election monitors and 152,790 representatives of political bodies. Those 223,374 people will be standing in every voting station to monitor the process and (hopefully) report incidents of fraud, manipulation, violence or malfunction.

The circle of violence seems to be going hand in hand with the preparations; today one of Mithal al-Alusi list’s members was assassinated in Baghdad when he was shot while driving his car in A’adhamiya district.
The INA of Allawi comes under attack again, today their office in Kerbala was assaulted and its furniture was burnt by “unknown” gunmen.

In the same regard American troops increase activity in Najaf after these troops greatly reduced their activity few months ago, apparently as part of a plan to reinstall order or prevent violence from affecting the parties’ campaigns or the election itself especially that Najaf witnessed an attack by nearly a hundred militia men on Allawi last week.
It was also revealed that an investigation has been opened in this attack to identify the offenders.
Meanwhile, the government declared emergency laws in Mosul and Anbar for 30 days as part of the measures aimed at creating a safe environment for the awaited election. It was also announced that international borders with Syria will be sealed until the elections pass.
In the latest post we reported about an attack on the Kurdistan Islamic Union’s office in Duhok, yesterday Masoud Barzani the president of Kurdistan and head of the KDP condemned the attack and denied the accusation that Peshmerga loyal to his party were involved and he also ordered an investigation to be carried out.

The controversial former defense minister Hazim al-Sha’lan who’s been accused of stealing/wasting one billion dollars from the ministry’s budget returned recently to Baghdad. Most likely to deny the accusations and look after the final stage of his campaign. The United Iraqi Alliance’s bloc in the parliament repeatedly demanded removing parliamentary immunity from Sha’lan but these demands were also repeatedly blocked by the Kurdish bloc.
However, the parliament has had its last session two days ago ending the mission of the interim Iraqi national assembly. This means that the now considered former assembly members such as al-Sha’lan are no longer protected by parliamentary immunity so it is expected that the United Iraqi Alliance will try again to get an arrest warrant on al-Sha’lan.

The results of a public opinion pool conducted in Babil province showed some interesting findings; the poll conducted by al-Mada research institute interviewed 460 men and women in a random sample technique from both the urban and rural parts of the province.
When asked if they were going to vote or not, 96.7% answered with “yes” while in only 3.3% of the cases the answer came as “no”.
When asked which list they’re going to vote for, 41.6% said they’ll be voting for the United Iraqi Alliance, second came Allawi’s “731 list” with 24.6% while all the rest of lists shared 15.5% of the votes in the poll.
The remaining 13.8% said they hadn’t made up their minds yet, something not unusual if we know most people know very little about the lists’ they’re supposed to chose from.
This poll showed that 77% of the interviewed people knew only the head of the list (24.8%) or a few more members of their favorite list (52.2%).

To be frank to you, I haven’t decided who to vote for until yesterday for the very same reason. Yesterday we were discussing the this subject with some friends, most of us found themselves swinging between two or three lists and couldn’t reach a final decision on our votes. Gladly we found that the IECI had the full lists of candidates in all Iraqi provinces unlike last time in January when most of the candidates chose to hide their names out of fear.
So we brought a small whiteboard and wrote down the names of the top ten candidates from the five lists we were discussing, we made a comparison and then three of us (including myself) reached a final decision on who to vote for…no, I’m not telling you my choice know!


I’m leaving you with this cartoon by Khudair al-Himyari through which you can get a glimpse of what walls in Baghdad look like with the gazillion election posters added up every day!

Violence interrupts campaigning, this time in Kurdistan.

Unfortunately, electoral violence keeps escalating as we get closer to the election day, not only that as this time it has spread to that part of Iraq that had been void of violence when compared to the rest of the country.
Today we heard disturbing news about clashes between the Peshmerga soldiers loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the guards of the office of the Kurdistan Islamic Union in Duhok.

The report from al-Hurra said that more than 40 of the guards and members of the Kurdistan Islamic Union were killed or injured when Pehmerga soldiers raided the Union’s office and later set it on fire. It is also believed that the man heading the Union’s list of candidates was among those injured.
An eye witness (as he claimed) told al-Hurra that the raid was an act of revenge because the Islamic Union has recently accused the local administration dominated by the KDP of being corrupt.
I’ll try to convey the man’s words as accurately as I can:

The Kurdistan Islamic Union based their electoral campaign on fighting corruption which they accuse the KDP officials of being heavily involved in…Unfortunately here in Kurdistan we do not have the same tolerance and freedom of speech our brothers in Baghdad have...

On the other hand, a few hours ago Allawi’s INA office in Najaf came under a rocket attack two days after Allawi “survived assassination” as he described it.

This series of violent acts and exchanged accusations and sensitivities suggest that we will see fraud in the elections in certain parts of the country.
I wouldn’t worry about Baghdad, Diyala or Kirkuk as these provinces have mixed populations and there’s a state of balance among the different powers that exist there but I have many reasons to worry about ballots in regions dominated by one trend or sect. so I think we’ll be facing possible fraud in several provinces in the west, south and north.
Will monitoring be efficient enough to prevent this?
I hope so.

A week ago Iraqi lost a great talent and a true patriot; Mo’ayad N’ima the great prolific cartoonist passed away of a heart attack at the age of 54 leaving us a rich heritage of artwork that had always touched our feelings and discussed our life, problems, and dreams in the most brief yet frank and telling way.
We have posted some of his works before on this blog and today I’m sharing with you one of his latest works in which Ni’ma comments on the arrogant tyrant’s behavior in an earlier session of the trial.




“Now you are a nation of democracy and freedom, so would you kindly, if you don’t mind…please, I beg you to let me out so that I can kill some Iraqis again”

The trial of our time…

This is how some local media chose to describe Saddam’s trial.
Today the trial witnessed many changes for the Iraqi viewer. There has been a lot of action that wiped off the memories of previous sessions that were pretty much boring; today we have seen the trial get into the real work discussing facts, evidence and witnesses and this of course pinned the viewers in front of the TV.
It was eight of us following the trial. Talking in whispers and shutting up anyone who wanted to speak with a sign from the hand.

At the beginning (as you might have seen) the defense tried to disrupt the court by questioning the legitimacy of the court and the laws under which it was formed but these were futile attempts because the lawyers built their allegations of older Security Council resolutions that are irrelevant to the trial and they ignored the later resolutions that transferred sovereignty to Iraqi hands and they also ignored the regulations issued by the elected government and parliament that organized the court months after Paul Bremer left Iraq.

The theatrical act of walking away from the court only to return back soon after was actually pathetic and unconvincing and when Ramzi Clark and the Qatari lawyer Najeeb Noaimi were given the time to talk they returned to talk about things like occupation and that again they concentrated on UN and international laws and conventions when it came to the legitimacy of the past regime while they didn’t refer to any of the laws and resolutions that recognize the legitimacy of the current government and the political process in general.

One sentence from the Qatari lawyer was enough to show that he was very far from reality, that was when he spoke of “five million children who died because of the sanctions).
I really don’t know where he got this number from but what I know is that his language was a lot similar to Saddam’s who invested the death of Iraqi children to get compassion from the world while he was destroying whole shipments of milk, food and medicine or worse re-exporting to make bloody profits for himself.

The judge was firm-yet gentle-in keeping the proceedings on track every time there was some distraction and he failed all attempts made by this or that party to politicize the trial.
The crime was committed back in 1982, that’s long time before any of the political stuff happened and all the involved parties in the incident were Iraqi, the land, the victims, the butchers were all Iraqi and execution orders were still being documented at that time and in my opinion this is what encouraged the prosecution to put this case first on schedule; it’s the most documented case and again it’s pure Iraqi while if we take a look at other cases we will find that some extrinsic factors are related like the invasion of Kuwait or the war with Iran or Halabja (geographical factor) in addition to the issue of the providers of the chemical weapons that were used in these cases. This will all complicate the cases and make them more difficult to solve but Dujail is a pure Iraqi case.

I think the most important part of today’s session was the two witnesses who showed up to testify in spite of all what we heard from the media that witnesses are scared to death and they wouldn’t show up!
What we saw today makes me believe that there will be even more witnesses from the sons of Dujail who will walk in and testify.

The first witness was 15 years old in 1982, he said that he was arrested along with his parents, 8 brother and six sisters and he spoke in detail about his story from the time Saddam made his speech in Dujail till the time when he (the witness) and some of his family were released from prison in 1986 and I say “some” because this man lost 7 of his brothers during those years at the hands of the brutal regime.

The witness referred to excerpts from Saddam’s speech in front of the people of Dujail and he described how Saddam’s convoy came under fire after Saddam left the house of a local sheikh. Then he began describing how he and his family were interrogated in the Baath Party HQ and here he pointed at Barzan (Saddam’s half brother) and said that “he was in charge of the interrogations” and accused Barzan of giving orders to kill his brothers. Here Barzan yelled “to hell with you and your brothers!”.

The butcher lost control over himself and starting shouting only to be silenced by the judge, then some of the lawyers began complaining from someone who apparently was whispering threats at the lawyers or staring at them!
Again, Barzan lost control and started cursing and spitting at someone in the upper section of the hall, supposedly the same person who was threatening the lawyers; this person’s identity wasn’t revealed but the judge ordered security to get him out.
Now court hall was back to order.
The witness continued to tell the horror story of the four years he spent with his family being tortured and moved from one prison to another.
The prosecution asked him if anyone died during torture and the answer was “yes”. The witness named some people who were mentioned at an earlier time in the interview that a Dujail survivor agreed to give us; Sabriya and Yousif Yakoob were among the names we heard today and were mentioned in the interview we posted two years ago. Coincidence? I believe not.

The witness also talked about women who died with their babies during labor while in prison and I believe one of the cases belong to the mother of our friend Dr. Firas.

He also accused a well known NGO, the “association of free prisoners” of not giving him access to the important documents he gathered in the first place and he said the organization is “keeping the documents to make material benefits at the expense of our bloods” a serious claim that urges thorough and immediate investigation.

The testimony in general was very touching that it forced the butchers to shut up for a long time and even when Saddam tried to act as if he were still in power he looked so stupid and foolishly arrogant in front of the suffering of the witness who finished his statement by saying “at age 15 I went to prison for 4 years with the rest of my family, seven of my brothers were executed and none of us got the chance to see a judge or get a fair trial’.

The second witness adhered more to the core of the case unlike the first one who somewhat weakened his position by getting into details he should have stayed away from.
Whoever, this is totally understandable from a person who lived every detail of the whole tragedy, someone who never ceased to get flashbacks from the massacre that fell upon him, his family and his entire town.
With time, those details became an inerasable part of his memory and we can’t blame him for talking about atrocities that he didn’t witness in person.

Anyway, this doesn’t change anything from the fact that a massacre was committed and those who did it shall face justice.

Today's election update.

Things are beginning to get nasty here; today Allawi was forced to leave the Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf when an angry mob started chanting slogans against him and his list. Reports say he and his company were bombarded with stones and shoes which forced Allawi to rush out of the place.

Allawi described the incident as an assassination attempt carried out by “60 men wearing black clothes and armed with knives, swords and pistols”.
Anyway, the incident doesn’t exactly look like an assassination attempt.
The angry mob was most likely made of supporters of Sadr or the SCIRI (the UIA in general) since they consider Allawi the first threat to them in the elections.
And anyway, they wouldn’t dare kill Allawi; I think they only wanted to stop him from campaigning in a city they consider their home.

The UIA has begun (again) to use pictures of Ayatollah Sistani in their campaign posters and signs.
This is happening despite the fact that Sistani hasn’t clearly voiced his endorsement of the UIA but leaking statements from his office are hinting at this.

This development is creating more worries among other parties who are feeling that voters are wrongfully being stolen from them and redirected to the UIA.
Several candidates from such parties appeared on TV and condemned the acts of the UIA and demanded a clarification from the top cleric.

The association of Muslim Scholars said that they sense the government is walking away from the commitments and agreements that were made in the Cairo conference in reference to the latest security operations carried out in Anbar province.
Of course this is an allegation as illegitimate as usual since the “resistance” never seemed to be slowing their attacks, neither against Iraqis nor against the multinational troops.

It’s getting visible by the day that the Sadrists have infiltrated several lists and planted many of their men in different lists and got them good positions in these lists, i.e. these lists were fooled by the Sadrists who promised each one of them that the list would be endorsed by Sadr, a promise that apparently made the leaders of these lists drool at the votes that Sadr’s name can win for them because they saw how Sadrists won nearly 20 seats in the National Assembly in the January elections.

Yesterday, al-Hurra TV organized the first televised debate among leaders and representatives of 6 the major political parties and alliances, including Mithal al-Alusi, Laith Kubba (heads of their own lists) and judge Wa'il Abdul-latif from Allawi's list in addition to thre other gentlemen who spoke for the UIA, Accord Front and INA. This is something totally new to Iraqi audience and it was really interesting to watch this several hour long debate as it allowed voters to know more about what the different candidates think about several important issues.
What enriched the discussion was the participation of a number of civil society activists and well known journalists including the editor in chief of al-Sabah.

I'm done for now...

Iraq's election update...

We’re now less than two weeks far from the elections and naturally this is intensifying the exchange of accusations among the competing parties especially among the hot candidates for forming the next government.

To day there were two press conferences for Allawi and the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA for short from now on); Allawi focused on accusations of corruption on the hands of the current government and he named 4 reasons for leakage and wasting of national resources, all of which he attributed to the malpractice and incompetence of the government and he didn’t mention any role for sabotage or mismanagement on the part of UN or coalition authorities in wasting or mishandling Iraq’s money, apparently because he wants to show the government as the main defective entity. This came a week after he said that human rights violation are as bad as they were in Saddam’s time, another controversial accusation that is better taken with a grain of salt since it’s election season.

As a reaction, PM Jafari attacked Allawi for his meeting with commanders of the Iraqi Army a few days ago during a military parade and members of the United Alliance described the meeting as a flashback from the era of military coups.
Allawi defended his act by saying he took permission from the officials in the defense ministry.

The leader of the Alliance, Abdul Aziz al-Hakeem spoke proudly of the accomplishments of his government and Jafari attributed their failure to accomplish more tasks to the heavy legacy left by the previous interim administrations while Allawi accused Jafari’s government of ruining what his administration had accomplished during its term last year.
Al-Hakeem also mentioned that if they win the elections, they will show more care and attention to the needs and problems of women and youngsters, ironically, all of his list members who appeared in the conference were men.

The third major list that both of the above lists are seeking post-election alliance with is the Kurdish alliance. The Kurds know that their seats will be essential for the formation of the new government so they are currently standing by and watching without commenting while Allawi and the UIA exchange fire.
The UIA mentioned that the activation of clause 58 of the constitution which draws the road-map for the resolving the situation in Kirkuk will be among their priorities in an obvious attempt to seek the renewal of their alliance with the Kurds who have always considered Kirkuk one of their main issues.

The Kurdish major parties, the KPD and PUK are concerned about the possibility of a low turnout in the Kurdish provinces. There’s a feeling that many Kurdish voters are not satisfied with their political leaders’ policies and since they have intention to give their votes to non-Kurdish parties, some expect Kurdish voters will resort to remain silent and not give their votes.

The technical preparations for elections are already underway, the borders and airports are not allowing non-Iraqi’s into the country as a measure to stop or reduce the numbers potential foreign terrorists who might out attacks to disrupt the electoral process.

On the other hands, the Ayatollahs in Najaf announced that their offices will close for two weeks until the elections are over and they have instructed their students and aides to tour the cities to inform the voters about the details of the process and to encourage them to vote. So far the Ayatollahs haven’t publicly endorsed any particular list but one list, namely the UIA is making hints at the subject; Jalal Addin al-Sagheer in the Friday prayers made a strange statement. He said “the clergy declared support for the UIA once and that’s enough. We do not need to renew the support…the Quran was delivered to the prophet once not twice”!!
Other Sheat preachers encouraged Sheat voters to focus on one big list and leave the smaller ones. They didn’t name that big list but it is clear what they meant.

The war of words and posters is visible on the streets and it’s leaving its marks here and there with small paper posters being torn or pasted over and larger billboards being burned. The people who do this usually focus on burning the face of the candidate that is printed on the billboard, making things look even more personal.

There’s one major threat that keeps haunting every democratic practice in Iraq, that’s the participation of the Sunni cities. Although turnout levels in the October referendum were relatively high in these cities, the latest developments can possibly suggest otherwise.
The Sunni powers aren’t united among themselves, some are eager to be part of the evolving democracy while others are still making high demands in return for their participation or for dropping their weapons.
This explains the latest assassinations that reached a prominent member of the Islamic Party as well as a prominent cleric in Fallujah.

The divide in Ramadi in particular is big; we all saw how armed men wearing masks took over the streets for several hours while their supposed leaders were negotiating the situation with US and Iraqi officials. The city looked as it were under curfew which means residents were preparing themselves for the worst possibilities.
In my opinion it was merely a show of power by the militant groups and a message to the government and the US that elections in Ramadi can be disrupted and consequently the whole process would lose credit.
On the other hands, clerics in the city mosques are calling on the people to vote and a good sign is that they are not trying to push the people towards any particular list.

Election violence and violations of campaigning rules are still happening; a couple of days ago Allawi’s list lost their candidate in Amara/Maysan in an assassination while in Diwaniya/Qadisiyah, the city council shut down the city’s local radio station and they used a police force to stop the radio from opening again; a very worrisome incident that adds to our fears from a possible election fraud in the Southern provinces where certain well known parties and their militias had infiltrated almost every office.
Tough and efficient monitoring is crucial this time…we cannot afford to end up with manipulated results, not this time.

That’s it for today; more updates will be coming, hopefully on daily basis.

This is 4 days old but I have just come across it and I find it interesting.
Senator Lieberman says “America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists”. And I'm taking a long quote here.
(Hat tip: Timmer).

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America.
If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

The above statements do not sound new to me, why? Because we have been saying the same things over and over again in this blog for the past two years and I don’t know why it took so much time from some politicians to start recognizing these facts.
Anyway, I’m glad they finally did!

Who's ready and who's not?

Some naysers like to say that the Middle East, countries with Muslim or Arab Majorities are still not ready for things like elections or democracy and some go even as far as saying that those countries do not want elections or democracy.
This is not entirely wrong because Yes, almost every government in those countries does not want to share power with others or let their peoples decide what’s best for their countries.
This update on Egypt’s parliamentary elections from Sandmonkey says a lot:

Those people braved serious injury so that they can go in and excersize their constitutional right to vote. The Police, which was supposed to facilitate and protect them tried to prevent them from even using that way to get inside the polling station.

My people in Iraq braved bombs and bullets to practice their basic right of voting and the people of Egypt are bravely facing state terror to do the same. The threats and dangers may vary in intensity but the spirit of the people is pretty much the same.

Want to know which Iraqi party shares more political views with you?

It’s kind of possible now, this website offers an interesting interactive “Electionnaire” that will ask you 25 questions on the top political topics in Iraq.

You answers will be compared to the answers of 10 top Iraqi parties and will give you in percentage which party you have more in common with.

Ironically, four of us (Mohammed, I and a couple of friends; 2 Arab Sunnis, two Arab Sheat) took the test and in all cases we found that the closest party to our thinking was either the PUK or the KDP, the two major Kurdish parties while the INA of Allawi came second or third.
By the way, the test is available in three languages, English, Arabic and Kurdish.