The Common Ills: Nothing's ever legal when it comes to Iraq

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Nothing's ever legal when it comes to Iraq

ACLU‏Verified account @ACLU 9 hours ago

Yesterday we told a federal court that the Trump administration has no legal authority to detain an American who's been held in Iraq for nearly five months without charge.

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So will the person be released as the courts state should happen?

When does legal ever apply to Iraq?

Anthony H. Cordesman, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, observed in July of last year:

Unless Iraq's leaders can come together and govern more effectively, defeating ISIS may well be a prelude to continuing ethnic and sectarian crisis or civil war. While the war against ISIS has created some degree of cooperation, it is important to note that the ISIS invasion was enabled by massive misgovernment under former Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, and a steady rise in ethnic and sectarian violence—that had risen back to the 2008 levels of civil conflict by the time ISIS invaded Fallujah in January 2014. Significant tensions and risks of violence exist within the Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shi'ite factions. Iraq also is not able to choose its neighbors or its “friends.” Russia, Iran, Turkey, other Arab states, and the United States and its allies all have conflicting interests and compete for influence.

That was over a half year ago and there's still no movement towards cohesion in Iraq.

The US government is pinning hopes on Hayder al-Abadi.

Others aren't quite as sure.

Surveying the landscape ahead of the planned elections, Tallha Abdulrazaq (ARAB WEEKLY) offers:

Since announcing in January that local and national elections would both be on May 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has faced a series of political disasters, leading many to doubt whether he is charismatic and strong enough to hold his newly created list together before the candidates are tested in the polls.
Abadi harmed his credibility as a unifier after forging a political alliance with the sectarian Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and spending much of the battle for Mosul assuring Iraqis that no militants would field candidates in elections without first disarming. Abadi named his new electoral list the "Victory Alliance," seeking to capitalise on the perception that he was instrumental in the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS).
However, less than 48 hours after the announcement, the pro-Iran PMF announced it would be splitting from the Victory Alliance and contesting elections separately under its own "Conquest List" against the prime minister. Essentially, by allying with the PMF, Abadi ensured that the group would have grounds to proceed with fielding its own candidates but failed to calculate it would abandon him once it got what it wanted.
A little more than a fortnight later, the incumbent suffered another blow to his prestige when senior Shia cleric Ammar al-Hakim announced he would also be parting ways with Abadi. Hakim, scion of an influential Shia clerical family, declared he would set up his own "Wisdom Alliance" to contest elections against the prime minister, declaring he would try to work with Abadi "for the shared benefit of the country."
Despite the positive-sounding rhetoric, reports suggest that Hakim threatened to walk out on Abadi soon after the departure of the PMF's Conquest bloc. As Abadi was unwilling to guarantee better political positions should the Victory Alliance claim victory in May, Hakim decided to weaken Abadi by leaving the list and creating his own.

Violence continues in Iraq. See if you can spot the most disturbing detail in this report from XINHUA:

A total of seven people were killed on Saturday and six others injured in two violent incidents in Iraq's central province of Salahudin, provincial police sources said.
In one incident, a police patrol found five bodies of shepherds who were kidnapped earlier by unidentified gunmen in the south of the ethnically-mixed city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 90 km east of Salahudin's capital Tikrit, said Col. Mohammed Khalaf from the media office of the provincial police. The bodies of the victims showed bullet holes in their heads and chests, Khalaf added.

Coprses dumped in the streets. They don't get dumped because someone's in a hurry. They're dumped to send a message. When that starts happening, Iraq's usually experiencing another surge in violence.

The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, NPR Music and the ACLU -- updated: