The Underground Rumor of the Day

An explosion happened while US soldiers accompanied with WMD inspectors were trying to break into a chemical store.

WMD inspectors?!
freedom democracy freedom democracy WMD whooaaaaaaaaaa

Did everyone enjoy the new super achievement of our great governing council?
We have a pale new flag!
Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
And guess what... the new flag has an interesting collage too: a sign for Muslims, a sign for Kurds, a sign for the two rivers and a sign for me smiling :*)

The GC is doing its best now (in cooperation with the CPA) to announce new plans for building the next Iraqi government (the post June 30th one) before the UN announces any clear plan. It seems that the Bush adminstration are not very happy with what the UN may say, they unleashed their puppy today…

Anyway…
Back to Syasa (politics)…

The situation of Falluja and Najaf isn’t getting any better, but I still believe that the real crisis is the Najaf one; Falluja is a smaller conflict for sure.

The deep disagreement between AsSadr and the SCIRI is kind of historical, the older generation of both Sadr and Hakim were not the best friends ever, Mohammad Mohammad Sadiq AsSadr (the one assassinated in the late 90s, the father of Muqtada) used to criticize the general policy of SCIRI at his time, and some underground rumors accuses the Ayato Allah AlHakim (the one assassinated last year, the brother of the Current GC member AlHakim) of helping in a way or another in killing the old Sadr. When the American administration approved the return of Badr Militias (The SCIRI militias) from Iran after the end of this war, small conflicts started in the Shia areas that maybe was one of the reasons for the establishment of the Mahdi Armi (AsSadr militias). At that time the only militias in Iraq were Badr and the FIF (Chalabi’s militias), and both were approved and backed up by the American Army…

AsSadr and SCIRI are the two main Shia parties controlling the southern region of Iraq now, but the party and militias of AsSadr are much more popular, I can say that the real center of AsSadr is Amara (northern to Basra) where no one can notice a single evidence that SCIRI has any activities there, they have a real isolated small office and a mosque that they prey in, but when we speak about the main center of SCIRI we are speaking about Najaf, Najaf is the Holy-City of Shia, The Imam Ali is buried there, (Karbala is the second holy-city where AlHusien and AlAbbas are buried), AsSadr took AlKufa (which is a small town attached to AnNajaf) as his center, the main mosque of AlKufa was the one his father used to give his last Friday Prayer speech before his murder, it is an important Islamic symbol too. The thing I’m trying to say is that AsSadr is active and powerful even in the central city of the SCIRI.

The last Friday prayed speech (which is the most important political indication) witnessed the first in-public criticism of the policy of AsSadr, the SCIRI spokesman indirectly announced the beginning of the new Shia-Shia conflict. From the SCIRI position, I think they find themselves committed to criticizing any anti-occupation movement, because they are the main player in the GC.

There is something that I used to say one year ago, and I’m still repeating it… The “real” war in Iraq didn’t happen yet. I still think the American administration is underestimating what can a person like AsSadr do, and starting a Shia-Shia conflict will only increase the size of explosion.

Ok, back to my road map.
:*)

The Iraqi Road Map: Part Three: The National Reconstruction Campaign

The 1991 war was much more destructive to the Iraqi infra-structure than this one, electricity plants were destroyed, bridges and main roads, and many other important sectors, but the Iraqi national reconstruction campaign was really successful in rebuilding the entire country in no time (some months), in spite of the embargo and economical challenges. That reconstruction campaign gave the Iraqi governmental sector establishments a great experience, and enhanced the Iraqi engineers and technicians capabilities in discovering appropriate methodologies in the reconstruction work.

Iraq doesn’t need any foreigner companies to come and take a part of this post-war reconstruction. American companies must be pulled out of Iraq as soon as possible and the Iraqi people must take back their right in rebuilding their country by themselves depending on their ministries and national government, that will create hundreds of thousands of vacancies for unemployed Iraqis (maybe fighting against the occupation now), and will reduce the costs of the reconstruction to less that 25% of the current expenses; the Iraqi labor market is very cheap comparing to any foreign one, and the Iraqi reconstruction methodologies are based on local materials and practice.

The national reconstruction campaign (that should have started one year ago) must include more items than mere physical buildings construction and services reconstruction; it must reach to rebuilding the Iraqi community… the civil society its self, that can start by activating the participation of the local communities in rebuilding their neighborhoods through micro-projects programs, activating civil society institutes. I used to be the director of an Iraqi grassroots organization working in the south; we implemented over 150 projects in three months depending on the local communities and people were eager to help each other and work in their neighborhoods.

Fixing the pubic services (like electricity… that was supposed to be fixed in the first couple of weeks after the war stopped) is really important to give people a stable pattern for their life, it will give Iraqis the feeling there is an authority that controls their country.