Morning fire

Assassination of Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah

Unknown gunmen assassinated the Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah, adviser to the minister of culture, on Muhammad al-Qasim Street in central Baghdad on Saturday 23 August, 2008. Security sources explained that "unidentified gunmen opened fire using pistols with silencers on his car, the source added that "the accident occurred at about 15:00 local time (12:00 GMT), and Shayyaa was transferred to the hospital before he died there." And the sources confirmed that "his driver was seriously wounded" and was rushed to hospital.

Shayya was a well known researcher and writer and literary critic; he was appointed an adviser in the Ministry of Culture since 2003 after the changes which affected the country and worked with the three ministers who occupied the post of Minister of Culture and they are respectively: Mufeed Al-Jazaeri, Nouri Al-Rawi, Asa'd Hashemi and Finally, with Maher al-Hadithi.

Shayya who was resident in Belgium before the fall of the regime, is one of the most prominent supporters of establishing a new cultural trend in Iraq to be in accordance with open secular aspects.

The deceased was born in the city of Nasiriya (375 km south of Baghdad) in 1951 and worked in the field of translation and writing of literary and cultural researches. He was a member of the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party and one of the most prominent writers and editors of the (Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadeeda "New Culture") magazine issued by the Communist Party. He worked for it 1970s, before leaving the country for political reasons.

IraqSlogger.com reported that Shayya's death has had consequences in the Iraqi intellectual world:

A few weeks ago, an assassination in Baghdad took the life of a high-level official
in the Ministry of Culture: Iraqi academic Kamil Shayya'. Little interest was given
to Shayya's assassination in the Western media, but his life and death have become
the center of a heated debate between Arab intellectuals, involving difficult
questions on war, occupation, collaboration,resistance; questions that are likely
to be central for Iraqis and Arabs for years to come, regardless of the eventual
fate of the US enterprise in the country.

The first flare in Shayya's controversy began when Pierre Abi Sa'b, the cultural
editor of al-Akhbar newspaper, penned an obituary for his fallen friend,
describing him as "our martyr, all of us. The martyr of contemporary Arab utopia
(in reference to Shayya's academic interests.)"
Abi Sa'b did not hide the fact that he disagreed with Shayya' when he decided,
in 2003, to return to Iraq and be part of the new US-sponsored government."

However, Mithal Al-Alusi has avoided assasination.

Liberal Iraqi MP Mithal Alusi’s family home in West Baghdad's Hai
Al-Jam’ia neighborhood was reduced to rubble this morning after
terrorists had rigged the structure with explosives in an apparent
assassination attempt. Alusi, a Sunni, had been leading in recent weeks
the drive to repatriate internally displaced Shia and Sunni families
back to their neighborhoods in Western Baghdad.

A couple of days ago, Alusi visited the house that his late father, a college
professor, had built in the 1970s but did not enter the premises. There is a ‘Sons
of Iraq’ checkpoint manned by ex-insurgents directly across from the
house. An investigation as to the causes of their negligence (surprise,
surprise) is underway by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.

Today’s event is a reminder that men such as Alusi, whose two sons were killed
in a previous assassination attempt in February 2005, are still active
in Iraqi politics and had never given up on the country despite being
embattled and unfunded. He always stood for a secular and non-sectarian
patriotic agenda, one that is being emulated by many Iraqi politicians
now. It is even being parroted by the Consensus Bloc that rejoined
Maliki's cabinet a couple of days ago. They have come a long way since
their previous candidate for the Ministry of Culture fled Iraq over a
year ago--with U.S. official connivance--ahead of an arrest warrant
charging him with the murder of Alusi's sons.

He has even appeared at an anti-terror conference in Herzilya, Israel last week!

Iraqi parliament member Mithal al-Alousi delivered the opening statements
at the Herzliyah Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Conference Wednesday,
in which he called for stronger relations between Iraq and Israel.

Al-Alousi also called for stronger cooperation between Iraq and
Israel in fighting terror, and issued a harsh condemnation of Iran,
which he accused of meddling in Iraqi affairs.

The Iraqi parliamentarian has spoken at the ICT conference two
previous times. His visit in 2004 elicited harsh criticism in Iraq and
several attacks were launched against them, including one that left his
two sons dead.

Recently, there has been a great deal of research published on the Iraq situation,
especially after the Sinjar raid in which Al-Queda in Mesopotamia documents were
captured by Iraqi and American troops. The following are some of the studies put
out recently that shed light on how the conflict is developing. All three of these
documents (with the possible exception of the Brookings report below) are heavily
indebted to the American war effort and thus will reflect quite obvious bias. Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout is for instance written by West Point military men!

Nevertheless, for sheer statistics as well as for their insight into American imperial policy and the
internal Iraqi situation, I believe they are worth the read. Now the critical question with regards to Iraq is not whether the Americans will withdraw (they will), but what are the forces of the ground that may push for a more progressive society in the wake of withdraw? What are the forces that will push for civil war? And has the last five years of mayhem diminished the stature of the fundamentalists and sectarians?

The Iraq Index by the Saban Center for Mid-East Policy

A compilation of statistics and facts on Iraq researched and published by the Brookings group, updated in late August.

Includes:

Estimated Number of Iraqi Civilian Fatalities by Month, May 2003-Present…………………………………………………………………………………4
Detailed Explanation of Iraqi Civilian Fatality Estimates by Time Period…………………………………………………………………………………….5
Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq………………………………………………..………..…………………………………..……………..……..…….9
Killed and Wounded in Multiple Fatality Bombings………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………...9
Multiple Fatality Bombings by Type Since January 2007…………………………………………………….………………………………………………..10
Detailed Breakdown of Deaths Associated with Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq……………………….…………………………………………..…...10
Number of Multiple Fatality Bombings Targeting Civilians by Sectarian Group and Month………………………………………………………………11
Number of Newly Displaced People Per Month in Iraq, Externally and Abroad…………………………………………..………………………………...11
Number and Current Status of Concerned Local Citizens (CLC’s) in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………..12
Status of the Sons of Iraq by Location (With Monthly Pay)………………………………………NEW……………………………………………………..12
Weapons Caches Found and Cleared in Iraq, by Year………………………………………………………………………………………………………...12
Progress of Political Benchmarks Agreed upon by the bush Administration and the Iraqi Government………………………………………………….13
Journalists Killed in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..……………21
Nationalities of Journalists Killed in Iraq….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..21
Circumstances of Journalist Deaths……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..21
Iraqis Kidnapped……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………..….…21
Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Troops……………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...…………..21
Fuel………….……………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….39
Oil Revenue from Exports……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..…………….……………..40
Electricity………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….……….….…………….41
Nationwide Unemployment Rate………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………..……42

Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout

...not only expands on the analysis of the Sinjar Records conducted in the first report, it also introduces a host of new data, including:

* Statistics on the exact number and nationality of foreign fighters held by the US at Camp Bucca in Iraq.

* Contracts signed by AQI's foreign suicide bombers

* Contracts signed by AQI fighters entering and leaving Iraq

* Accounting sheets signed by various fighters that indicate funding sources and expenditures

* Several narratives describing AQI’s network in Syria, personnel problems, and ties to Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon

* Weapons reports, etc.

Findings

The report has several major new findings:

* Foreign Fighters were an important source of funds for AQI; Saudi Fighters contributed far more money than any other nationality

* Far more Syrians and Egyptians are held at Camp Bucca than were listed in the Sinjar Records, which likely reflects the demographic shift away from those nationalities

* Approximately 75% of suicide bombings in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007 can be attributed to fighters listed in the Sinjar Records.

* “Bleedout” of fighters from Iraq is occurring, but in relatively small numbers. Nonetheless, these individual fighters will likely be well-trained and very dangerous. The primary threat from these fighters is to Arab states, Af-Pak, and perhaps Somalia.

* Smuggling of all kinds across the Syrian/Iraqi border has long been linked to corruption in both Syria and Iraq, which limits both government’s ability to crackdown.

* Fighters that contributed money to AQI were more likely to become suicide bombers.

Special Groups Regenerate in Iraq by the Weekly Standard

Most Dangerous Course of Action

The Special Groups and Iranian-retrained
JAM can take a less immediately violent,
but more strategically dangerous course
of action: namely, to reintroduce a bettertrained
and well-commanded militia in 2009 or
later, as U.S. forces draw down. The training and
reorganizational period might compensate not
only for tactical weaknesses, but for the brittleness
of the command structure that accounted for
its inadequacy. Ties between commanders of
different geographical areas and echelons could
be strengthened in Iran, if the organizations are
not excessively fractious or if leadership there
has the capability to overcome disagreements
quickly. Alternatively, it is possible that the
IRGC-QF could create an elite and responsive
force – weeding out divisive members and leaders
and retraining them over a six-month to a year
period– in order to have a small but effective
militia capable of fomenting attacks against the
government of Iraq over the long-term. The most
likely form of this militia would be an adaptation
of the Hezbollah model suitably modified for
Iraq, which could be reintroduced whenever or
wherever the government is suitably weak. The
organization might be ready to function during
the 2009 national election or in 2010 as the new
Parliament, Prime Minister, and Cabinet take
office—a moment that was central to the creation
and use of Special Groups in 2006.