Sistani and the Green Zone...
by Riverbend

Today was a mess. It feels like half of Baghdad was off-limits. We were trying to get from one end to the other to visit a relative and my cousin kept having to take an alternate route. There's a huge section cut off to accomodate the "Green Zone" which seems to be expanding. We joke sometimes saying that they're just going to put a huge wall around Baghdad, kick out the inhabitants and call it the "Green City". It is incredibly annoying to know that parts of your city are inaccessible in order to accomodate an occupation army.

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Civil War, Carnage: Coincidence?
by Robert Fisk

Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. Al-Qaida has never uttered a threat against Shias -- even though al-Qaida is a Sunni-only organization. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qaida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists enthusiastically have taken up this theme. Civil war. Somehow I don't believe it.

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Juan Cole's excellent comments on the signing of the Basic Law..

Basic Law Signing: "Fallout from Crisis Remains

Hamza Hendawi of AP reports today on the signing of the Basic Law in Baghdad. The five Shiite hold-outs decided to sign "for the sake of national unity" despite severe reservations about some of the clauses. In particular, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had signalled to them his objection to a provision that allowed any three provinces to reject a new constitution when it is crafted. In other words, the new constitution will have to be approved by an enormous supermajority of 90 percent of Iraq's provinces. This is more than the already rigorous 75% of states that are needed to pass constitutional amendments in the US. Grand Ayatollah Sistani is concerned that this 90% rule will allow small minorities to take the constitutional process hostage. Shiites have pointed out that provinces in Iraq are not equally propulated, with some only having a few hundred thousand inhabitants. Theoretically, less than a million persons could reject a constitution passed by all the other 24 million. (The provision seems to allow for a popular referendum, such that if a 2/3s majority of the province rejects the constitution, it fails). The provision was put in for ths ake of the Kurds, who worry about a tyranny of the Arab majority.

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Zabriskie on Iraq: "There is Anger Everywhere"

Sometimes I talk to or read a correspondent who spent a few weeks in Iraq, and I don't recognize the Iraq he or she reports back. Max Boot went embedded last summer can came back with tales of bustling bazaars and a quick return to normal. Since he had not seen the bazaars the year before, he had no grounds for judging whether they were more or less bustling. Nor do bustling bazaars mean everything is hunky dory. (When I was in Beirut during the civil war, people shopped. It was just that some of them got sniped at while they were in line.) One reporter told me last fall that Iraqis are not very nationalistic; that if you just make their tribal leaders happy everything will be fine; and that the capture of Saddam meant the end of the insurgency. But Iraqis are very nationalistic; tribal leaders are less important than they used to be; and the insurgency was never about Saddam; it probably isn't even about the Baath party in any meaningful way. In contrast, Zabriskie's Iraq sounds like the one I read about in Arabic and hear about from people outside the green zone who are not embedded.

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