Iraqi Election Update

The newspapers are reporting a big win for Prime Minister Maliki in the provincial elections, and predictably are leaving out the nuance that such a victory entails. First of all they are claiming that this win for Maliki is a "loss for Iran," as if Iran doesn't have major ties to the Dawa Party and Maliki himself.

Second, while everyone is focusing on the Shiite Maliki/Sadr split - and really, Maliki had all the guns, so his victory was sealed when the US military helped him raid Basra - it's the marginalization of the Sunnis in Baghdad that could spark outrage and unrest, much like the apparent electoral fraud in Anbar:

The conventional wisdom has been that the provincial elections would redress the sectarian imbalance in the Baghdad Council -- which had only one Sunni, a Communist, out of 57 seats because of their boycott of the 2005 elections. Sunnis (many of whom continue to believe themselves a majority) expected to capture a significant share of the Baghdad council this time. Most U.S. analyses shared that expectation, which was the basis for hopes that the provincial elections would lock in the incorporation of Sunnis into the political process.

But a dramatic increase in Sunni representation (commensurate with their aspirations) was always unlikely for one big reason: the clearly visible refusal to take serious measures to allow refugees or internally displaced persons to vote. IDPs were technically enfranchised, but the rule that they vote in their place of origin and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy ensured that few actually would. In September, Brian Katulis and I warned that failure to deal effectively with the IDP problem would "essentially ratify the country's new sectarian map" created by the bloody sectarian cleansing of 2006-07. According to IOM's authoritative surveys, about 64% of Iraqi displaced come from Baghdad -- and it is in Baghdad where the effects of their disenfranchisement are most being felt. With less than 10% (or even 20%) of the seats in the Baghdad council, Sunnis may well feel that this warning has come true. How will they react?

The unexpectedly strong showing of Maliki may reflect a popular yearning for a strong central government. But add on the unexpectedly strong showing of the Islamic Party in Anbar, and it is difficult to not wonder whether there is more to the strong showing of the incumbent parties than their popularity. Months of "shaping operations" and state-funded patronage may have had something to do with it as well. But either way, the provincial elections seem likely to shift attention to exactly the question we worried about last fall: how will frustrated challengers react to their failure to obtain the share of state power that they had expected? Ahmed Abu Risha, head of the Iraqi Awakening Conference and a key American ally in Sunni Iraq, has already proposed one answer: "We will form the government of Anbar anyway...An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud." That beats the "Darfur" and "graveyards" and "streets running with blood" of which others speak, I suppose... but none are quite what the cheerleaders for this process seem to have had in mind.

The Sunni Awakening was predicated on hopes that they would get a share of power somewhere down the line. If they are shut out of the political process, who's to say they won't turn to other means?

...It looks like some thumbs were placed on the scales in Anbar, giving the election to a third party and not the Awakening coalition or the Iraqi Islamic Party. Lynch:

I never expected the provincial elections to solve all of Iraq's problems, and they didn't. The elections have created new problems that need to be recognized and dealt with -- especially Sunni frustration in Baghdad, intra-Sunni strife in Anbar, perceptions of electoral fraud in support of incumbents, IDP and refugee disenfranchisement, and the impact of the election of a strongly anti-Kurdish front up north. But that doesn't mean that disaster is lurking around every corner -- with luck, these new problems can be dealt with constructively.

Lest my coverage appear too negative, let me say that I'm very pleased to see the collapse of ISCI across much of the country and hopefully the end of its designs on creating a Shia super-region. And I'm happy with the strengthening of forces calling for a stronger central state -- since I've been arguing for years that the consolidation of a Weberian Iraqi state is the key to establishing the conditions for successfully extracting the U.S. military. With luck, the coalition-building phase can allow points of entry for some of the potentially frustrated challengers.

I'm sincerely hoping that all the parties involved can work out their conflicts peacefully and that the results are accepted as broadly legitimate -- both of which require frank, honest looks at what really happened and why. And then with the elections out of the way, the U.S. should move on to the business of starting its troop withdrawals and setting a new course.

UPDATE: This Anthony Zinni story is completely weird. He was offered the Ambassador job in Iraq and then never heard anything until he found out he was replaced by Christopher Hill (who ran the North Korea diplomacy)? How could they do that? Zinni is a valuable asset for Democrats on national security. Is the Obama team going to disrespect every Democratic general one by one?

Post-Election Uncertainty

Marc Lynch had a good piece yesterday excoriating the conventional wisdom about the "successful" Iraqi provincial elections and warning of potential trouble ahead:

I'm a bit confused by the rapturous reception across the board of the Iraqi provincial elections. I'm as delighted as everyone that the Iraqi provincial elections went off without major violence. But as I've been warning for many long months now, the dangerous part of the provincial elections comes when those groups who expected to win find out they didn't. Early signs are extremely concerning -- Anbar is under curfew after threats of violence, Diyala's outcome may signal a rapid escalation of Arab-Kurdish tensions, and that's not even looking at Baghdad [...]

The only result that the IHEC has certified is the surprisingly low turnout -- only 51%, significantly less than in the much-maligned 2005 election even with much increased Sunni participation. That should be a sobering number to those who have put such great emphasis on these provincial elections as a transformative moment.

That said, I want to focus on Anbar.

One of the main reasons that the U.S. pushed so hard for the provincial elections in the first place was as a reward for the Awakenings groups which had cooperated with the U.S. against al-Qaeda. For over a year the Anbar Salvation Council and various tribal groupings have been engaged in a nasty political battle with the Iraqi Islamic Party. The IIP controlled the provincial council after most Sunnis boycotted the election, and the Anbar Salvation Council wanted power for itself as a reward for its service against AQI. It almost came to violence at several points -- but it was always tamped down (in part) by the U.S. pointing to the elections as the moment for power to be transferred peacefully and legitimately.

I kept warning, publicly and privately, that they might not actually win those elections: that tribal influence may be exaggerated, that the Awakenings were internally divided, that the Islamic Party could draw on state resources. But I was told again and again by military sources and others that this was impossible, that the tribal groups controlled the streets, and that the IIP had no chance.

Well, early returns suggest that the Islamic Party has won at least a plurality in Anbar. Turnout was only 40%. Ahmed Abu Risha, formerly of the Anbar Salvation Council and now of the Iraqi Awakenings Conference [corrected], has been telling everyone who will listen that there was massive electoral fraud in Anbar, and that if the IIP is declared the winner the province will look "like Darfur." Another leader, Hamed al-Hayes of the Anbar Salvation Council, is warning that if the IIP is declared the winner his men will turn the province into a graveyard for the IIP and its collaborators. The Iraqi military has declared a curfew to prevent outbreaks of violence.

An uprising by Awakening groups in Anbar would be terribly violent, and the big question would be: who would step in to stop it? The Maliki government, a Shiite group putting down a Sunni rebellion? The US military, which has left Anbar to the Iraqis?

Today, there is news that Iraq is investigating voter fraud in Anbar:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 3 -- The head of Iraq's electoral commission said Tuesday that it is investigating "serious" allegations of electoral fraud in Anbar province that, if corroborated, could alter the outcome of Saturday's election, providing the clearest indication yet that voting irregularities occurred during provincial balloting.

A coalition of parties that competed against the Iraqi Islamic Party in Anbar submitted complaints that the commission considers grave, commission chief Faraj al-Haidari said. "We will deal with it seriously because it might change the result of the election in this province," he said.

As tensions sparked by the allegations of electoral fraud spread through Ramadi, the provincial capital, Iraqi law enforcement officials and U.S. Marines braced Tuesday for a possible outbreak of violence.

If the Awakening groups are awarded the election over the Iraqi Islamic Party, wouldn't that just cause violence as well? This seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario at this point. It's out of the public eye beyond this WaPo story, but this could be a very difficult several days for Iraq. Stay tuned.

"No Major Violence"

That's how the AP describes Iraq's provincial elections. I mean, sure, they put the entire country under effective martial law for a day and had voters pass through security checkpoints and razor-wire, but there were no major incidents. See, this time, only eight candidates were assassinated prior to the vote.

Progress!

I am actually hopeful that President Obama will live up to the security agreement and withdraw from Iraq, but let's not kid ourselves that the place is like Cape Cod on a windswept morning. It's still a war zone and we still broke it, and we'll need to be engaged diplomatically and financially for a long time.

Cernig has more that is interesting:

But there are still deep-seated problems in Iraq which these provincial election's won't touch, or will actually make worse. The Kurdish North didn't participate and neither did the disputed region of Kirkuk. Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga have already faced off there a few times and most analysts see Kurdish aspirations as the primary future source of violence. Then there's the resurgent Sunni minority, where the old and entirely undemocratic tribal power structure is set to be the election winner. And among Shiites, factional infighting which has fractured Maliki's own coalition heavily, looks to be another potential source of future violence. We may not know the full results for a month or more and there are going to be divisive allegations of intimidation, vote-rigging and double-crossing to navigate.

These elections are a good thing, but they're not a universal panacea. Still, the American Right wants to have its cake and eat it. They want to pretend that provincial elections mean "victory" while getting ready to blame only Obama if Iraqi social fractures ignored by Bush for so long lead to more violence later.

...Sunnis in Baghdad were left off the voter rolls. Iraq IS learning about American-style democracy!

Oh, Judgment?

Today John McCain set the record straight. He's not questioning Obama's patriotism, he's questioning Obama's judgment.

That would be the judgment that was against invading Iraq. That would be the judgment that has been calling for an increased commitment to Afghanistan for years, and now that Afghanistan is reaching a point of crisis (a HUNDRED insurgents attacked the French? A separate attacked tried to overrun an entire base in Khost?), even the Pentagon is starting to agree:

The Pentagon will be sending 12,000 to 15,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, possibly as soon as the end of this year, with planning underway for a further force buildup in 2009.

A request by Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, for three U.S. brigades with support staff has been approved. "Now that means we just need to figure out a way to get them there," adds a senior defense official [...]

And there may be even more to come. "I've also asked for some additional forces on top of that for the current fight," says McKiernan, who wants to bolster the 101st Airborne Division in Regional Command East, which has been rocked by recent insurgent attacks. In July, nine U.S. troops were killed by insurgents who overran a combat outpost on the Kunar border of eastern Afghanistan. This week, militants tried but failed to overrun a base in Khost, just a few miles from the border, launching waves of attacks just before midnight on Monday.

Finding those particular troops to supplement the 101st, however, depends on conditions and troop levels in Iraq, adds McKiernan, who took over the NATO command in June. "That's really a zero-sum decision."

I don't agree with dumping more forces into Afghanistan long-term, although there does appear to be a short-term security crisis. But isn't it interesting how Obama is driving the actual foreign policy results, with McCain (and Bush) following? More troops for Afghanistan, a time horizon for Iraq, moving beyond Musharraf in Pakistan? On all of these judgments, Obama is on much more solid ground, and gets there much faster than his opponents.

Another facet to this: Spencer Ackerman flags NATO Commander McKiernan's comments about more troops being a "zero-sum decision" and says that comment was directed right at David Petraeus. Iraq has its own problems - the looming powderkeg in Kirkuk, a more assertive Nouri al-Maliki pushing around prominent Sunnis throughout the country and muscling out Shiite rivals before provincial elections, the very real threat of spasms of violence if the elections are seen as rigged - but those are localized and, honestly, inevitable in the jockeying for power, and our troops there are serving no national interest. Whereas in Afghanistan, there's at least some notional national interest in a short-term effort to garner some sense of stability. But with troops tied up in Iraq, Afghanistan gets short shrift, and it will soon be Petraeus' job to make assessments of the whole region, at which point he'll need to take the Iraq blinders off.

Iraq In Fragments

Because some of us are still paying attention.

• First the really good news: this report in the Guardian that Muqtada al-Sadr is going to urge his forces to completely disarm, and transform the organization into a political and social movement. This would be the greatest hope for stability in Iraq, although the final outcome may end up with Sadr in power. It seems to me that this shift goes hand-in-hand with this report that a tentative deal has been reached with the US on a status of forces agreement that would set a timeline of withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by 2010 or 2011, provided that conditions remain the same on the ground. Sadr's Mahdi Army had a goal of driving the Americans from the country, and with that on its way to being achieved, he is free to change his movement into one that is expressly political.

• When those political skills will be able to be used is unclear, as the Iraqi Parliament adjourned without agreement on a provincial election law, which pushes the next round of elections into next year, in all likelihood. This means that the politics is still at a complete gridlock in the country, with looming explosions like Kirkuk still unsettled. So the good news always comes with the uncertain and potentially catastrophic in Iraq.

• Parliament did provide $21 billion dollars in supplemental reconstruction funding for the country. However, that's just a portion of the projected $79 billion budget surplus that has resulted from oil revenues in Iraq (how sad that Iraq's economic future is brighter than our own?). I believe that we owe it to the Iraqi people to rebuild their country, but at the same time these surpluses in a government that has a poor track record on corruption invites concern.

• Back to the deal on a withdrawal timetable, which has not been announced in the US press, it's a complete contradiction of George Bush, who said this just yesterday:

"I talk to him all the time, and that's not what I heard," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard Air Force One on the start of a trip to Asia. "I heard a man who wants to work with the United States to come up with a rational way to have the United States withdraw combat troops depending upon conditions on the ground, that's all."

That rational way happens to be a timetable remarkably similar to Sen. Obama's, and Bush apparently just signed onto it as well. Also in this reported deal, the US military cannot arrest Iraqis without government approval.

• A very strange argument was put forth by the axis of Pollack/O'Hanlon yesterday, that ethnic cleansing was not the chief cause of the reduction in violence in Baghdad, because casualties went up there in 2006. Yeah, that's what they call ethnic cleansing, guys. Meanwhile, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad visited Baghdad and cites the giant prison cell-like walls as a chief cause of security gains.

What I found contradicts all the official reports: Baghdad is a city where one street is at war with the next, where the people are more desperate than I've ever seen them. It has been transformed into a city of walls. There are twenty miles of walls slicing up the Sunni and Shia ghettos, each wall over 12 feet high. They are the main reason why the casualties have fallen, not because peace is on its way. In Adhamiyah, I meet a member of the Sunni militia, and he tells me, “I cannot move behind that square over there. If I did, I would be killed. It's a prison here.”

• Finally, there's no KFC in Fallujah. That I had to write a sentence that dippy just shows the complete dishonesty from the right wing about anything in Iraq.

Progress Waits... Again

With all the talk of withdrawal and whether the surge worked, maybe somebody could take a look at the political progress that neocons claim the Iraqis are making?

Iraq's parliament passed legislation Tuesday setting new rules for provincial elections, a step widely viewed here as critical to the country's process of political reconciliation.

But Kurdish lawmakers boycotted the vote over the status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich, ethnically mixed city that Kurdish leaders believe should come under the control of their autonomous regional government in northern Iraq. The move could undermine the legislation and delay the provincial elections, which had been expected this fall.

The Kurds vowed they'd boycott the vote if it was done by secret ballot, which the Sunni Speaker of the House proceeded to do, leading to a Kurdish walkout and an expected veto by Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq (who happens to be Kurdish).

Given all this, there is no way provincial elections carry off in October, meaning that Sunnis will still have weakened representation in the Parliament through the rest of the year. They keep delaying and delaying the status of Kirkuk because everyone knows a solution will lead to bloodshed. To consign the Kurds in Kirkuk to essentially the same forces who repressed them under Saddam will be unacceptable. And Arabs who want to limit Kurdish influence want Kirkuk in their hands, largely due to the oil resources. It's untenable.

The point is that this vaunted political progress never actually gets to a point of conclusion, and Iraq muddles through, relying on US military to keep the tense situation under control. I would argue that an end date for removal of forces would actually force them to confront these difficult issues instead of the constant delay.

UPDATE: Ugh, from Marc Lynch:

Keep an eye on the special meeting of the Kurdish Parliament called for today over Kurdish outrage over the Kirkuk provisions in the just-passed provincial elections law, which Kurdish leadership is calling a "coup against the Constitution." The Kurdish bloc is calling for a re-vote, which might make sense but would be of dubious legality. Some (overly excitable?) Arab and Iraqi reports suggest that in addition to Talabani vetoing the provincial election law (over which the Kurds walked out of Parliament) the Kurds could pull out of Maliki's government and potentially even bring it down. Wouldn't it be wild if the estimably pro-US Kurds, the biggest fans of a long-term American military presence, bring down Maliki at the height of his perceived power immediately after he expressed support for the removal of US troops by 2010... over a seemingly entirely unrelated issue?

Yikes.

Piecing Together The Puzzle Of Iraq

So I'm still trying to get a handle on the Iraqi leadership's comments about the need for a timetable for withdrawal in the status of forces agreement. Initially I saw it as a political statement designed to curry favor with Shiites opposed to the occupation, with enough caveats and strings attached so that US troops woudn't have to leave for a long, long time. However, if Ayatollah Sistani is involved, as he looks to be, then this could actually be real. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, made his remarks after meeting with Sistani, so his imprimatur may be on this.

I actually thought Bush would jump at the deal for those reasons. But so far, he hasn't, and John McCain has been completely flummoxed over how to react to this. First he tried to dismiss it and claim that success must be dictated by events on the ground. Then, a spokesman conceded that if the Iraqis wanted the US to leave, we ought to do so.

Aides to Sen. John McCain sought on Wednesday to clear up their boss' position on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's recent insistence that a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops be included in any security agreement between the two countries.

"John McCain has always been clear that American forces operate in Iraq only with the consent of that country's democratically elected government," Michael Goldfarb, a McCain spokesman, told the Huffington Post. "The Senator speaks frequently with Iraq's leaders and they have made clear that they share his belief that any timeline for withdrawal must be dictated by the facts on the ground. He met with the foreign minister and President separately within the last month...He met with Maliki on his last trip to Iraq sometime in late March."

The DNC jumped all over this indecision and waffling.



And Sen. Obama is now going around saying that Prime Minister Maliki now agrees with him. Jon Soltz of VoteVets trumpeted this as well on Hardball, and McCain's own quote about how we should leave if the Iraqis want us to is being used against him.

There are still a lot of moving parts here. Today an Iraqi government spokesman kind of softened the message from one that was already pretty soft.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A deadline should be set for the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from Iraq, and the pullout could be done by 2011, an Iraqi government spokesman said Tuesday.

Ali al-Dabbagh said any timetable would depend on "conditions and the circumstances that the country would be undergoing." But he said a pullout within "three, four or five" years was possible.

"It can be 2011 or 2012," al-Dabbagh said. "We don't have a specific date in mind, but we need to agree on the principle of setting a deadline."

The only difference between this and what George Bush says is the listing of an actual date. Which he's not even adhering to. And of course, he can't. Maliki's government cannot credibly claim that violence has ended in Iraq - three dozen Iraqis died two days ago, and yesterday was similarly bloody. He requires US air support to maintain even a semblance of order. I think Eric Martin is on the right track:

There are at least two (perhaps overlapping) reasons for Maliki's recent pushback and sudden demand for clear timetables. First, Maliki and his advisors (never enamored with the prospect of US forces remaining in the country long term) caught a glimpse of the SFA and SOFA that the Bush administration had in mind (or caught an earful from Sistani/the Iraqi people), and balked at the onerous and overreaching terms. Combine this with the Maliki team's knowledge that a new administration is likely on its way in, and Maliki et al may have decided that their leverage has improved to the point that they can dictate the SFA/SOFA terms along the lines of their true preferences (or those of Sistani/the Iraqi people to the extent they differ).

The other possibility, the one McCain has been pushing, goes something like this: details of the SFA/SOFA leaked to the media/Iraqi population, and Maliki et al have been forced, by domestic political concerns (read: the nationalism of the Sadrists), to take a hard line position on withdrawal and the terms of the SFA/SOFA. Behind the scenes, however, Maliki will give the Bush team what it wants. This view is, circumstantially, supported by the fact the Iraqi people (outside Kurdistan) overwhelmingly prefer a timeline for withdrawal, and have reacted in strong opposition to the details of the SFA/SOFA that were made public - though that doesn't necessarily militate in favor of the argument that Maliki wants us to stay, just that there would be public opposition regardless.

It is actually quite difficult to determine which narrative is more accurate. Some, such as Swopa, have long argued that Maliki and his UIA allies have simply been biding their time, waiting for the right moment to evict the American interlopers - in which case, the first narrative seems more likely. Others, such as myself at times, have argued that the fragile Maliki/ISCI coalition view US support as essential to maintaining their grip on power (at least for a little while longer) - in which case, the second option would be closer to the truth (unless the pressure from Sistani/the Iraqi people proved irresistible). To clarify, it is been my contention that eventually Maliki/ISCI would want us out, as soon as they deemed their consolidation of power sufficient, but that such a moment might be some years off.

Martin continues that Maliki made the same kinds of unilateral statements about the expulsion of Blackwater after the Nissour Square shooting, and eventually Blackwater re-signed contracts to work in Iraq, and nothing happened to Maliki as a result. And he makes the key point - it is politically popular in Iraq to fight against the occupation. That is simply never going to change, and whether Maliki is blustering or not this has to be seen as the beginning of the end. Whether that will end in an orderly withdrawal or with helicopters off the rooftops of the Embassy depends on how this SOFA is negotiated and implemented - which is why having someone with the judgment to carry this off correctly is so crucial.

Some Context For The Iraq Timetable Remarks

Now that Iraq's national security adviser has joined the Prime Minister in calling for the US-Iraq status of forces agreement to include a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops, it's time to place these remarks in context.

Nouri al-Maliki is trying to win an election. He wants to outflank the Sadrists who have been resisting the US occupation for some time. There have been massive demonstrations among the Shiite community to drive the occupiers out. It's significant that the NSA, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, made his comments in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, and after discussions with the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, no less.

But the actual withdrawal proposal put forth by Maliki and the Iraqi government is far less than it seems.

The Iraqi proposal stipulates that, once Iraqi forces have resumed security responsibility in all 18 of Iraq's provinces, U.S.-led forces would then withdraw from all cities in the country.

After that, the country's security situation would be reviewed every six months, for three to five years, to decide when U.S.-led troops would pull out entirely, al-Adeeb said.

The proposal, as outlined by al-Adeeb, is phrased in a way that would allow Iraqi officials to tell the Iraqi public that it includes a specific timetable and dates for a U.S. withdrawal.

However, it also would provide the United States some flexibility on timing because the dates of the provincial handovers are not set.

That's the key. This is a positioning document for al-Maliki, who wants to consolidate control in provincial elections. He's trying to prove that his rule has been successful and that he is not a puppet to the Americans. The other day he said that terrorism has been defeated in Iraq - it was his "Mission Accomplished" statement - as proof that he has been able to increase security all by himself.

The practical effect of the agreement described above is negligible. We've only handed over security responsibility in 9 of the 18 provinces to date. There's enough flexibility in this statement to hold off withdrawing all combat troops for potentially up to a decade. And 10 years is a long time and lots of things can change. This is an election-year "peace is at hand" statement that Maliki can wave around to the Iraqi public.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bush jumped at it, actually. It's certainly a good deal for him - he gets to pretend to leave while locking in for a long-term arrangement. He helps Maliki consolidate power and break the back of the Sadrist movement. It perpetuates the myth that we aren't seeking permanent bases - there's nothing in the withdrawal document about after-action forces - and that Iraq has some form of soveriegnty.

So let's not kid ourselves - even with such an agreement in place it will be very important who is in the White House implementing the policy, which could result in a gradual withdrawal or no discernible change for decades. If Sen. Obama wanted to clear up confusion about his Iraq policy that the brain-dead media seeks to muddy, he could come out strongly endorsing this concept of a phased withdrawal and the right of the Iraqis to self-govern. And he could specifically explain that this document wouldn't necessarily do that, and that it would be up to the policymakers to determine the next course.

Iraquagmire: Lucy Pulls The Football From Charlie Brown Again

For the second time in a month, the Iraqi presidency council has vetoed a law that was hailed as a great breakthrough by the Bush Administration, John McCain and the slew of neocon handlers. This familiar pattern plays on the failures of most of the traditional media to follow up on anything. There's a big news hit when the Iraqis pass a bill, like the de-Baathification law, or this recent one setting up provincial elections. Then the law is quietly submarined, but that story ends up on A-27, weeks after the initial story on A-1. The effect is to give people the false sense that there's any political movement whatsoever, pushing the "shut up we're winning" story right along to a public that can't be expected to do the legwork and know the difference. And here we go again.

The rejected bill, which sets out the political structure for Iraq's provincial governments and establishes a basis for elections in October, was only the second of 18 U.S.-set political benchmarks that the war-tore nation needs to reach.

Parliament considered it in a bundle with two other bills, a general amnesty and a budget, and approved it on Feb. 12 in what was welcomed in Washington as an example of good government, compromise and progress toward national unity.

Now the question is whether parliament is willing to revise the measure.

"It was a package deal. Now that package is broken," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan.

This was the set of bills that led Huckleberry Graham to say that politics moves faster in Baghdad than in Washington. But now there's chaos. The complex way in which this compromise was brokered was the result of deals made by all the major stakeholders. If points in the October elections now have to change, that'll need to be balanced with changes in the other two laws, and the whole game of Jenga can come crashing down in a hurry.

And those elections really need to happen. In parts of the country where the Sunnis boycotted the initial elections, the representative is completely out of whack. The sticking point is whether the elections will produce strong provincial governors who cannot be removed by the Prime Minister at will. This is more than a technical difference. It's basically the difference between a weak federalist state and a strong central government. While the Presidency council claims the October 1 elections will go on as scheduled, that really is not a guarantee.

Meanwhile, in the other nightmare on the horizon, the Turkish incursion into Kurdistan, the Secretary of Defense has called for a rapid conclusion to the fighting (why is he giving the Turks timetables? The PKK will wait 'em out!), for fear of it destabilizing the region and provoking a peshmerga counterattack, which has already been authorized by Kurdish lawmakers. Turkey is currently vowing to pull out in a matter of days but again, there's no guarantee, especially considering that yesterday produced the strongest fighting yet, with 77 PKK members dead. Many experts are worried.

The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.

I'm beyond believing what gets printed on page A-1 at the early stages of anything that happens in Iraq, and so should so. The media is carefully stage-managing a situation that is far more dire than they let on.

UPDATE: Here's why the provincial elections are so important: the current Shi'a provincial leaders in Anbar are thinning the patience of the Awakening groups. It's a matter of time before they do more than walk off the job, but retaliate:

U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support.

Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province's Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met. In Babil province, south of Baghdad, fighters have refused to man their checkpoints after U.S. soldiers killed several comrades in mid-February in circumstances that remain in dispute.

Some force leaders and ground commanders also reject a U.S.-initiated plan that they say offers too few Sunni fighters the opportunity to join Iraq's army and police, and warn that low salaries and late payments are pushing experienced members to quit.

First off, we're trying to pull off a balancing act that is nearly impossible, pleasing former insurgent and militia groups and the central government that wants no part of them at the same time. Second, insurgent groups are starting to infiltrate the Awakening groups as they grow more and more frustrated. Third, attacks on Concerned Local Citizens members are rising. Fourth, since the provincial leaders in places like Diyala are Shi'a, owing at least in part to the Sunni boycott of the previous elections, the Sunnis are being marginalized in their own home regions.

A restive mix, to be sure.

UPDATE II: Turkey is more committed to resisting troop timetables than the US.

Turkey has given no clear timeframe for ending its military operations against Kurdish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Thursday after talks with Turkish officials.

Progress In Iraq

The last time we were here, the Parliament passed a de-Baathification law that the Presidency Council refused to sign because it would have put a target on the backs of ex-Baathists. So I'm going to have to wait and see what comes of this, especially because there appear to be little catches to everything and nobody has actually read the bills:

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three far-reaching measures that had been delayed for weeks by bitter political maneuvering that became so acrimonious that some lawmakers threatened to try to dissolve the legislative body.

In a classic legislative compromise, the three measures, each of which was a burning issue for at least one faction, were packaged together for a single vote to encourage agreement across sectarian lines.

“Today we have a wedding party for the Iraqi Parliament,” said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, who is a Sunni. “We have proved that Iraqis are one bloc and Parliament is able to find solutions that represent all Iraqis.”

But the parliamentary success was clouded because many of the most contentious details were simply postponed, raising the possibility that the accord could again break into rancorous factional disputes in future debates on the same issues.

The three measures are the 2008 budget; a law outlining the scope of provincial powers, a crucial aspect of Iraq’s self-definition as a federal state; and an amnesty that would apply to thousands of the detainees held in Iraqi jails.

It was unconstitutional for the Iraqi Parliament to bundle the laws in this way, but hey, whatever gets you through the night.

Juan Cole has some insight into the deals:

The budget that the parliament sort of passed, on its sixth try, awarded the Kurdistan Regional Government 17% of the $40 billion central government budget, with the proviso that this proportion be revisited in 2009 after a census, to be completed by the end of December, 2008. (Many Arab delegates do not believe the Kurds constitute so large a proportion of the total population of Iraq).

The law of the provinces bestows special prerogatives on them that al-Hayat does not specify. McClatchy says it also sets Oct. 1 as the date for provincial elections.

The setting of a date for provincial elections is extremely important. I have argued that elections in the Sunni Arab-dominated provinces are a necessity for calming Iraq. Diyala, for instance, is 60% Sunni Arab but is ruled by the pro-Iranian Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the provincial elections of January, 2005 (the turnout in al-Anbar was 2%). Thus, virtually none of the governments in the center-north and west of the country has much real legitimacy. It will be easier for the US to turn over security duties to elected provincial authorities who have the backing of significant numbers of Sunni Arabs, and so the elections could pave the way to a US drawdown in those provinces.

One reason that the provincial elections have been delayed is that there are fears in Baghdad that the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr will sweep to power in the Shiite south. It from all accounts has gained in popularity as the current dominant provincial party there, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has become much less popular. (ISCI has been trying to run many of the southern Shiite provinces, but has not been able to provide security and services at the level desired by local people). Presumably one reason for bundling the law of the provinces with the amnesty law was to make Sadrist MPs vote for the package. They did not want to grant amnesty to Sunni Arab prisoners, but only by supporting this step could they get a date certain for provincial elections, which they think they will largely win.

Sounds like the provincial elections are a Catch-22 and could lead to an explosion of violence. Yet this has to be what passes for progress in Iraq nowadays.