Reidar Visser: PDF Tribute of Iraq Articles for Aaron Swartz

PDF Tribute of Iraq Articles for Aaron Swartz by Reidar Visser I can easily sympathise with the outpouring of support for Aaron Swartz who took his own life this7 weekend after having faced the prospects of decades in jail in the United States for his computer hacking activity. In the first place, Swartz championed academic freedom and specifically open access. He criticised the system whereby journal publishers make good money from institutional subscriptions to academic journals, whereas the authors who write the articles never earn anything, and the students who need the articles often face difficulty in getting access to them on a reasonable budget. The whole business of academic publishing has in many ways  become farcical, with the supposed gold standard of "double-blind peer review" often nothing more than barely disguised camaraderie. Second, Swartz was a victim of prosecutorial overreach and law enforcement agencies abandoning entirely the principle of proportionality in responding to a perceived problem. For a hacking crime that has been described as the equivalent of checking too many books out of the library, S was facing the prospects of decades in jail and enormous fines. Once more, one senses that the advocates of openness are the ones that are being systematically targeted by the prosecution, whereas crimes on the part of emerging big brother governments are systematically ignored or even encouraged. We can only hope that Swartz's tragedy will prompt governments around the world to rethink their current tendency of bullying, persecuting and prosecuting academics who refuse to follow the mainstream. With respect to my own case of law enforcement overreach, I hope Swartz's tragic death will make the Norwegian government abandon their 2-year long fascistic witch-hunt directed against me: Since February 2011, the they have deprived me of my most basic human rights in an ill-conceived international police operation intended as punishment for perfectly legal street photography for an academic project. Thanks to the totalitarian tactics of the Oslo police, I was forced to leave my native land in a hurry and never got the opportunity to bring with me my Iraq materials. In solidarity with Swartz and the PDFtribute project, I will nonetheless take this opportunity to put online at least some of those Iraq articles that I have got copies of. My hope is that this tiny gesture will help put focus on the inhumane character of the war on academics that so-called Western liberal  governments prosecute, in the United States and Norway alike. Hyperlinked articles below lead to PDFs. If anyone has copies of other of my articles and want to share them here, please forward them to me at reidarvisser@gmail.com and I will upload them.   “The emasculation of government ministries in consociational democracies: The case of Iraq”, in International Journal of Contemporary Iraq Studies vol. 6 no. 2, 2012, pp. 232-242 “Policing a Messy Federation: The Role of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court, 2005-2010”, pp. 12-18 in Orient vol. 52 no. 2, 2011 “The territorial aspect of sectarianism in Iraq”, pp. 295-305 in IJCIS, vol. 4 no. 3, 2010 “Tribalism in Iraq: resurgent force or anachronism in the modern state?”  Contemporary Arab Affairs, vol. 3 no. 47, 2010, pp. 495-502 “The Kurdish Issue in Iraq: A View from Baghdad at the Close of the Maliki Premiership”, The Fletcher Forum, vol. 34, no. 1, 2010, pp. 77-94 “New Non-State Players and Implications for Regional Security: The Case of the Shiite Religious Establishment of Iraq”, SAIS Review vol. 29 no.2, 2009, pp. 11-20 “Proto-political conceptions of ‘Iraq’ in late Ottoman times”, IJCIS, vol. 3 no. 2, 2009, pp. 143-154 “Taming the Hegemonic Power: SCIRI and the Evolution of US Policy in Iraq”, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies vol. 2 no. 1, 2008, pp. 31-51 “Historical Myths of a Divided Iraq”, Survival, vol. 50 no. 2, 2008, pp. 95-106 “The Western Imposition of Sectarianism on Iraqi Politics”, in Arab Studies Journal vol. 16 no. 1, 2008, pp. 83-99 “Ethnicity, Federalism and the Idea of Sectarian Citizenship in Iraq”, in IRRC, vol. 89 no. 868, 2007, pp. 809-22

The Kirkuk/Census Ruling of the Federal Supreme Court, by Reidar Visser

Posted by Reidar Visser on Tuesday, 26 October 2010 14:03

In the recent resurge of discussion of the planned 2010 census for Iraq, there has been much focus on the decision of the ministry of planning to scrap the “ethnicity” field from the questionnaire.

This move has prompted strong Kurdish reactions since the Kurdish leaders see the results of such a census as relevant to the settlement of Kirkuk and other so-called “disputed territories” as per article 140 of the constitution. (Typical of the complex Iraqi situation, though the minister of planning is in fact himself a Kurd!) What has received less attention, however, is that the move by the ministry has been based on a ruling by the Iraqi federal supreme court that specifically tackles the relationship between the 2010 census and article 140.

In its meeting on 19 October, the federal supreme court dealt with a request from the secretariat of the Maliki government relating to the upcoming census. The question from the government is framed as follows, “Does the census planned for December, which includes a field called “ethnicity” on its questionnaire, have any relationship to article 140 of the constitution [on disputed territories such as Kirkuk]?”



The answer from the court is interesting: It says the census law of 2008 falls within the ordinary decennial censuses that were held in Iraq in the previous century, ending with the 1997 census. The court specifically says that the upcoming census has no relationship whatsoever to article 140, and that article 140 calls for a separate count in the disputed territories. The December 2010 census, by way of contrast, is for all of Iraq.

Based on this ruling from the court, the ministry of planning has apparently resolved to go ahead without the ethnicity field, since it has limited relevance for planning purposes, all Iraqis being equal in terms of government services etc. It is an interesting ruling that should perhaps serve as a warning to the Kurds about what sort of miracles the king they are currently in the process of making will be in a position to deliver at the end of the day.

The second Biden mission to Iraq, by Reidar Visser

Please see:

http://merryabla64.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/the-second-biden-mission-to-iraq-by-reidar-visser/

An Initiative to Create the Federal Region of Basra Is Launched

By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org)
11 November 2008

The Basra parliamentarian and former member of Wifaq Wail Abd al-Latif has announced that a petition requesting a referendum for the creation of the federal region of Basra (Iqlim al-Basra) as a standalone entity has been submitted to the Iraqi electoral commission, featuring 34,800 signatures. The petitioners believe that this number is sufficient to meet the requirement that at least 2% of the governorate population should sign the initial petition (this would correspond to a total Basra population of 1,740,000).

According to the framework for the creation of federal regions adopted by the Iraqi parliament with a tiny majority in October 2006, the next step now is for the petition to be published in local newspapers by the electoral commission which should then give supporters of the project at least one month to add their names to the petition to meet the required total of one tenth of the voter population necessary to call a referendum on the formation of a federal region (50% of the votes and 50% participation is required to win). If a region is formed it cannot join with any other federal region, only with additional governorates (the first draft of the October 2006 law said, “a federal region consists of one or more governorates or one or more federal regions”; this was subsequently changed to read “a federal region consists of a governorate or more” which clearly seems to suggest a desire on the framers of the law to exclude the possibility of two regions joining together).

The further process towards a final decision on the fate of the Basra federal initiative will be influenced by political struggles as well as numerous legal ambiguities. Politically, the idea of Basra as a separate federal entity has been under consideration since late 2003, but for a time coexisted with a scheme of joining Basra with the two neighbouring governorates of Maysan and Dhi Qar (Iqlim al-Janub). Then, from around 2006 onwards, the idea of Basra as a one-governorate federal region emerged as the most prominent of the local federal schemes, with supporters both among secularists (Wail Abd al-Latif), tribal leaders (such as Amr al-Faiz) and Islamists (the Fadila party).

Political aspects and legal ones are connected to each other with respect to what this initiative means in terms of a challenge to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), one of the Shiite parties that both the United States and Iran consider as one of their main partners in Iraq. Their competing idea of creating a huge nine-governorate sectarian Shiite region from Basra to the border of Baghdad has failed to create popular enthusiasm since its launch in August 2005. The formation of Basra as a federal region would entail additional difficulties for ISCI, which would face a more complicated roadmap in case they should wish to create a scheme for additional Shiite governorates to join the oil-rich Basra in a super-region. They do have the option of launching a competing initiative locally in Basra (this would be followed by a pre-referendum poll that would decide which of the schemes should go to a referendum); however the modalities for this and in particular the timeline is poorly specified in the October 2006 law, and ISCI seems to enjoy far less support in Basra than in Najaf (where there is almost no oil). This lack of legal clarity, along with the general trend towards more national attitudes in the Iraqi parliament as a whole (witness ISCI’s gradual retreat from its pro-federal propaganda and Nuri al-Maliki’s recent renewed call for a more centralised state), means that the future of the Basra federal initiative is far from certain. Some Iraqi nationalists consider it to be less harmful than federal schemes that are explicitly sectarian (such of that of ISCI), whereas others (including many in Basra itself) think that any extension of the federal principle south of Kurdistan remains objectionable.

Also on this topic:
Suffering, Oil, and Ideals of Coexistence: Non-Sectarian Federal Trends in the Far South of Iraq
Iraq Federalism Bill Adopted Amid Protests and Joint Shiite–Sunni Boycott
The Draft Law for the Formation of Regions: A Recipe for Permanent Instability in Iraq?

Biden's 700 Years and the Dangerous Road to a "Settlement" in Iraq

OPINION
By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org)
3 October 2008

During yesterday’s vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden repeated the basic thrust of Barack Obama’s comments on Iraq one week ago. According to Biden, “John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shiites got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years.”


In other words, Barack Obama’s apparent assumption of an endless conflict between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq was more than a slip of the tongue. Instead this seems to constitute a key ingredient in the Democratic narrative on Iraq: the country can be held together only by a strong ruler, otherwise Shiites and Sunnis would be at each other’s throats. Biden’s incarnation of the argument also served to clarify that Democrats quite literally are thinking of hundreds of years when they advance this contention; by his counting, the problems began in the early fourteenth century. That is certainly a slightly odd place to start, since Baghdad at the time was governed by Mongol rulers who themselves were rather difficult to label, sometimes they were pro-Shiite, sometimes pro-Sunni.

At any rate, even if the exact number of centuries in this case may be attributable to a Biden idiosyncrasy, the main point is clear. Democrats do not think Shiites and Sunnis have any tradition of coexistence in Iraq.


This assumption overlooks the fact that there were in fact no more than three major episodes of large-scale sectarian violence in Iraq prior to the rise of the Baathists: in 1508, 1623 and 1801; in all cases violence was instigated by foreign invaders from Iran or the Arabian Peninsula. Still, many will dismiss this entire discussion. Why should we care about such historical details when there are bigger issues at stake such as the US economy?

The reason these matters are important is that they relate to a more fundamental aspect of Democratic strategy in Iraq which has become clearly evident over the past weeks, despite apparent attempts by Joe Biden to avoid going into too much detail about his notorious “Iraq plans”. Democrats want a “settlement” in Iraq, otherwise they think that US forces will have to be sent back there again. (Biden told reporters a few weeks ago, “Without a political settlement, Tom, we’re going to be back there in another year or two or three or five.”)

A shift to the political sphere instead of the almost exclusive emphasis on the military found among many Republican strategists, now that seems perfectly plausible. But the danger with regard to Democratic strategy has to do with exactly how they want to perform this shift and what sort of knowledge about Iraq is going to inform it.

So far, three tendencies stand out: the Democrats want swiftness, involvement by the neighbours, and a “deal” to end what is seen as “centuries-long” conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis. Also – and this may come as a surprise to those who think of Democrats as less interventionist in the affairs of other nations than neo-Conservatives – Joe Biden’s confidence in America’s superior ability to handle these issues is not inconsiderable. Here are a few more notable quotes from his performance yesterday:

“We took Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, being told by everyone, I was told by everyone that this would mean that they had been killing each other for a thousand years, it would never work [i.e. but we gave them the Dayton accords].”

“When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it [presumably this is an interesting way of referring to the process toward UN Security Council Resolution 1701]. "

With regard to Iraq, this kind of arrogant drive towards a “settlement” would threaten to derail potentially positive developments currently going on inside the country, and would play into the hands of the neighbouring countries, especially Iran. It has to be stressed that those positive developments – a cross-sectarian alliance of parties generally seeking to diminish the exaggerated privileges accorded to ethno-sectarian forces in the 2005 constitution – take place despite current US policy, which continues to favour those who put sectarian identity and not Iraqiness first.

Nevertheless, backers of the new political current have managed to move from a situation in which they were in the minority in parliament back in October 2006 (when the law for implementing federalism was adopted) to a position of strength in the summer of 2008 (when they created a parliamentary majority to demand exceptional interim arrangements for Kirkuk instead of a mere postponement of elections there and earned the name “the forces of 22 July”).

These forces have consistently been ignored by the Bush administration. It is now clear that the Democrats, too, are unable or unwilling to detect their existence. But the particularly dangerous aspect of Democratic strategy concerns the eagerness for the “settlement” to be quick and easy.

Today, perhaps for the first time since 2003, it seems realistic to think that Iraq gradually may be able to fix itself, despite US policies that often work to the advantage of those who want to fish in sectarian waters. If the more nationalist forces continue to make advances in the provincial elections they could get to a position where they could contest the 2009 parliamentary elections as a wide coalition through mobilising on shared issues of constitutional reform with enormous resonance among the general population (among the recurrent slogans are “no cession of Kirkuk to Kurdistan”, “no sectarian federalism”, “no decentralisation of the oil sector” and “no ethno-sectarian quotas in government”).

In that perspective, perhaps the best thing the United States could do would be to ensure two rounds of fair and free elections in 2009 and then leave – with a unified Iraq with out without Kurdistan as the most likely result. On the other hand, if we are to have a quick “settlement” based on Biden’s ideas about “700 years of conflict” and other similar guesswork about Iraqi history, then the region could very soon turn into a quagmire far worse than anything seen since 2003.

It is in this perspective it is hard for an outsider to share the viewpoints of American intellectuals who talk of a big difference between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin when it comes to credibility on Iraq.

http://www.historiae.org/biden-palin.asp

IRAQI PARLIAMENT PASSES PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS LAW

By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org)
22 July 2008

The law on the Iraqi provincial elections was passed by the Iraqi parliament on 22 July. The adopted text largely reflects earlier drafts that have been circulating for weeks and months, with certain important amendments and clarifications:

• The hybrid system of lists and individual candidacies (single-person lists) is maintained. The adoption of this system means that the focus to some extent shifts from parties to politicians: voters can vote for a party list, or a specific person on a party list, or an individual candidate on a single-person list. However, the counting rules with no transferability mechanisms for “redundant votes” (i.e. surplus votes that accrue when a single-person list has reached the necessary number of votes required to secure election) still create a certain bias towards the established parties, because only multi-person lists will accumulate “party scores” that can give them additional shares of the last remaining seats.

• The female quota remains purely aspirational and has been subjugated to the increased focus on individual candidacies: there is a requirement to the parties about nominating a certain proportion of women high on the lists, but this “enhanced visibility” notwithstanding many voters will vote for individuals on lists rather than the lists themselves. A murky paragraph authorising the electoral commission to take undefined steps to secure a 25 per cent female representation after the elections appears to have been removed.

• The ban on the use of religious symbols survives in a slightly more general version: the use of pictures or propaganda for persons who themselves are not candidates is disallowed. Hence any party that wishes an ayatollah to grace its elections poster needs to convince the cleric in question about the virtues of serving as a councillor in one of the Iraqi governorates. Also the ban on the use of places of worship for election campaigning purposes is upheld, alongside an unchanged and still highly hypocritical "ban" on the participation of parties who maintain militias.

• The explicit mention of the 1 October 2008 deadline has been removed, and options for dealing with delays have been expressly mentioned: the existing councils will in that case continue to serve. The requirement of conducting the elections in a single day remains.

• With this piece of legislation, the formal “Lebanonisation” of Iraq has reached an unprecedented magnitude. Elections for Kerkuk have been postponed, but a power-sharing formula for the interim period has been envisaged in which key positions will be distributed between Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs and Christians in accordance with a percentage formula of 32-32-32-4. Security forces from “the centre and the south” of Iraq will take charge of Kirkuk militarily in this period, while a committee of politicians will have until the end of the year to explore solutions to the conflict over the city. In a conundrum to Iraqi and Arab nationalists, it seems as if the insistence on the hated logic of quotas (muhasasa) in this case has been the most effective means of countering Kurdish nationalist ambitions.

• In a similar feast of ad hoc ethno-religious cake-sharing, the “final provisions” of the law allocate a certain number of “minority” seats in certain parts of Iraq, without specifying the procedures for their election. In Baghdad there will be three seats, presumably mostly for Christians; in Mosul 2 seats, specified for Yazidis and the Shabak respectively; in the Kurdish areas two seats in each governorate (likely to go to Christians), and in Basra one seat which will probably go to a Chaldean or a Sabaean.

In many ways, the current version of the law for the provincial elections serves to underline the growing confidence of a group of centralist Shiite politicians around Nuri al-Maliki. It challenges the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) with the ban on the use of religious places of worship in elections campaign, while at the same time does not give the Kurds what they want regarding Kerkuk – Kurdish representatives ultimately abstained from the final vote, where some 127 out of 140 members of parliament reportedly supported the law. Interestingly, complaints about the voting procedure for the law itself prompted criticism from Kurds and UIA independent Khalid al-Atiyya alike, suggesting that the presidential veto may once more come into play in Iraqi politics in relation to this piece of legislation.

http://www.historiae.org/muhafazat.asp