Religious Shiites claim Victory

Again Juan Cole has the inside story in Iraq. I wonder just how he gets such detail from the US. His contacts via the Internet must be extensive. He does an incredibily good job, clearly a step above the networks. He points out that the Western press latched on to al-Hakim's statement that he could see an immediate withdrawl of US troops and missed that he called for a substantial withdrawl by the end of the year.

Religious Shiites claim Victory

Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim claimed victory in the Sunday elections for the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of religious Shiite parties he leads. And this is what the winners, if they are winners, think of the US:

' "No one welcomes the foreign troops in Iraq. We believe in the ability of Iraqis to run their own issues, including the security issue," Mr Hakim said. "Of course this issue could be brought up by the new government." '

The idea that the revolutionary Shiite al-Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Badr Organization (trained by the Iranian revolutionary guards), all of them with close ties to Tehran, would welcome a permanent US military presence in Iraq was always a chimera. Most Shiites who voted on Sunday thought they were voting for an end to US hegemony in their country. This is why it is so bizarre that the US Right is interpreting the elections as a victory for the Bush administration.


Interim President Ghazi al-Yawir expressed hope that a substantial withdrawal of Coalition troops could be effected by the end of 2005, and this hope seems widely shared in Iraq. Al-Yawir cautioned that it would be unwise for US forces to just up and leave immediately, given the chaos in the country, and the Western press often latched on to this part of his statement rather than his call for withdrawal by the end of the year. That is, it might on the surface look as though al-Hakim and al-Yawir are in disagreement, but they probably are not.

[More at Informed Comment]