Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/13/22 Jason Ditz: An Update on Iraq

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Jason Ditz, senior editor of Antiwar.com, joins the show to provide an update on what’s been happening in Iraq. They start with a look at Iraqi politics. An election was held in October, but the numerous factions have hit a wall in their attempt to form a government. That being said, Ditz does not think anyone is inclined to unilaterally seize power any time soon. Next, they turn to the recent Turkish offensive against the PKK in northern Iraq. Turkey claims they have the support of Iraqi officials, yet those same officials quickly came out against the campaign. Lastly, they touch on some intra-Shi’ite violence concerning gravesites that Ditz has been reporting on at Antiwar.com.      NOTE: After recording the above episode, Iraq's political situation continues to deteriorate with Sadr now ruling out a consensus government. Read Jason Ditz's latest on the situation here. Discussed on the show: “Tensions Lead to Iraq Intra-Shi’ite Violence” (Antiwar.com) news.antiwar.com  Jason Ditz is senior editor of Antiwar.com. Read all of his work at news.antiwar.com and follow him on Twitter @jasonditz. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scott horton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing the great jason ditts um senior news editor at antiwar dot com welcome back to the show how you doing jason i'm doing good scott how are you i'm doing great man appreciate you

joining us here and figure I'd take that pressure off from all the talk of nuclear holocaust and everything we'll just talk about Iraq which is hardly a thing at all if you think about it in the scheme of things um catching up here Iraq War 3 and a half I think

is where we left off we still have troops stationed I think mostly in Iraqi Kurdistan in the north but I'm not sure if that's all of them and I know that last I heard they were still going out on missions against ISIS whether or not embedded with the Iraqi army, but I don't really know.

And also I do know that the Iranians been shooting missiles into Iraq and that the Turks been dropping bombs and that the parliamentary democracy thing that they created, at least among the Shiites, is not quite working very well. So I just thought, man, maybe you could help us catch up. What the hell's going on over there?

Is all hell breaking loose or it's just another day in Iraq? that's hard to say because those are the same thing right all breaking loose in just another day right but nothing's been going right so it's kind of the same old same old we've got an election how many months ago now more months ago than their constitution would have envisioned them not having a government anyway it was it was an october election wow believe they're given six months to

well they have they have met the new parliament has met at the very least uh but they have no kind of parliamentary majority to put together so there's still no prime minister or the last one is still the acting prime minister or what yeah there's still no current prime minister it's still just the outgoing guy uh they their first process was to

agree on a speaker who was supposed to be a Sunni a Sunni Arab under their weird power sharing deal that they decided as an

immutable tradition but has only existed since the U.S. invasion. And there were two guys running for it from two different Sunni parties but the one guy collapsed in parliament on their first day of meeting and had to be hauled off on an ambulance

and the other guy ended up getting elected and now they're saying that election wasn't valid because the other guy wasn't even present. So that's supposed to lead to the election of a president who's supposed to be occurred. but they're still arguing over whether the speaker has been sorted out. The Kurdish groups are kind of fighting over who gets to be president because it's a do-nothing job,

but everyone seems to kind of want it. I mean, the Kurdish Democrats who are the largest have the largest. have the largest number of seats in parliament for a Kurdish block. They normally would be guaranteed that spot of president, but they've kind of indicated that they'll take it, but they'd also be more than willing to trade it for something else more valuable. Like if they get a nice ministership or some sort, sort of concession to the

Kurdistan regional government that they would be willing to step aside and let the patriotic union of Kurdistan have the presidency, which is who has it now. And it's only once they sort all that

out, that they can charge a party with trying to form a government and naming a prime minister. I wonder, is there a risk? I guess there is nobody strong enough, maybe Sauter, to just come to power and declare himself the Ayatollah now in the face of this, the breakdown of their pretended democracy there? Yeah, it doesn't seem like anybody is either able or, or at least inclined to do that.

Sotter probably is I mean he's got a lot of influence but he's also got the largest number of seats in parliament right now so he's sort of biding his time and figuring he's going to end up with a government anyway so he seems like he doesn't have to do anything rash although the state of law party which is somehow still around after collapsing umpteen times over the years. That's Maliki's party, right? Right. No, Noreal-Maliki's party with the heavy backing of the Iranian government, they're still thinking they've got a good shot of forming a government, and they've been heavily lobbying the Kurdish Democrats and the largest Sunni bloc to

try to support their side and let Mollaki return. Yeah, man, what a disaster. And well, let's not go over his history. Tell me about Mottaudal Sauter's role in all this. Well, Sotter's is

I mean, of course, Sotter's primarily well known because he's the son of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was hugely influential Shiite religious leader. He's the one that Sotter City

is named after and the like. I mean, he was so influential that He was the founder of the Dawa Party, right? And martyred by Saddam Hussein. Right. And, And he's, Motta al-Sadr, as a result, is very well respected among Shiites. Now, he's, at first, he kind of shied away from politics when the U.S. invaded and occupied.

He tended to, you know, criticize the invasion, push for a, push for a gun. government that was more independent and less beholden to foreign powers. And after a while, that didn't really happen. So he started fielding his own candidates and running his own parties. First, they were a small minority in the, in the Dawa, in the, they would be, you know, a few seats in the parliament and would get a voice. But they've grown and grown and grown, and now the soderous trend is the, they've almost got double the number of seats of anybody else. So one would think if anyone's going to form a government out of this most recent election, it would be them. Although Iraq is such a mess and has so many political parties that are small or big.

existent that getting together a 50% majority of seats is it's one of the toughest one of the toughest parliamentary elections out there. I mean

there are a few countries that you know, Iraq, Israel, I mean, some nations, it seems like every time they have an election we go through this where it's like, oh, they're never going to be able to form a government and and it takes way longer than it's supposed to and finally somebody

steps forward and just barely pieces something together but uh iraq seems like this time there's still a lot of question over whether anybody's going to be able to come together with with enough support and as you say the election was in october i mean are they going to maybe hold new elections try again that way Well, that would be, I'm sure constitutionally that's what was supposed to happen, and I'm sure legally that's what's supposed to happen, but in practice, I don't know that Iraq's going to want to go that way, because it's a pretty unstable situation as it is. and the political divide probably hasn't changed all that much since October. So you're very likely to, if they did run it over, to end up with more or less the same situation you have now, there was really nobody that's fallen apart since then where it's like, oh, this block seats are going to get distributed and that might break the tie.

All right, so tell me a little bit about the American soldiers fighting Iraq War 3 and a half against what's left of ISIS there. Is there much to that these days? Not much now. Most of what the American troops seem to do, at least as far as news reports indicate, is they mostly hang out on a few bases that they still have left, mostly in Kurdistan, some of it in the western part of Iraq. Just kind of wait for a rocket to hit the base, and then they can have a fit about, oh, somebody fired a rocket at us, and it's probably a run. And, you know, they're mostly there just for the sake of building tension, whenever anything happens kind of close to them.

Yeah. It seems like, and especially when, well, What are we to make of all the claims that it's always Khatib Hezbollah or whatever Iranian-linked Shiite militia every time a rocket lands on an American base there? Are you buying that? Or do you think some of the time it's actually just ISIS, but the Americans would rather blame their allies in the Shiite militias that they've been fighting for since the year 2003? Some of the times I think it's ISIS. Some of the times I think it's just Khatib Hezbollah's rivals. trying to get them discredited.

Sometimes, who knows, like these are not advanced rockets by any stretch of the imagination. Most of them are just sort of bouncing off of roofs and doing little to no damage. It's something that people get worked out. But Iran has been very, very particular about not wanting the rocket fire and don't attack the U.S. and don't attack anybody in Iraq. And they've also been very particular with Iraq on wanting to not see anything coming out of Iraq into Iran,

which has been something that they've claimed has been happening lately. Yeah, so the Iranian attacks, we go back like six weeks, Iran fired some rockets at the American bases there in Erbil. And they said it was retaliation for, if I remember right, an Israeli strike that killed some Iranians in Syria. But then, am I right? Do I remember it right there, Jason? they'd going to deliberately hit the empty corner of a base again like they like they did during

Trump after Trump assassinated Soleimani? I don't think they even hit a base in this, that most recent case. I think they hit sort of adjacent to a base. They were claiming it was an Israeli complex that they hit, that Israel had been operating out of Erbil and carrying out sabotage operations. and orchestrating all sorts of things. And nothing really happened when Iran fired the missiles at them, except everybody got worked up of like, oh, man, they fired missiles.

Something must be going on. And then it sort of quieted down, although Iraq recently said they still don't have any good intelligence to back up Iran's claim that this was an Israeli site that they hit. Well, and then this happened just the other day, too. They're firing into Erbil from Iran, and they say they're going after terrorists, but they didn't say, who were we supposed to think that they were talking about ISIS or somebody else?

P-JAC? That's the strange thing is, yeah, they hit. They fired some artillery into Erbil. They said it was terrorists. They didn't say who. They didn't say where or why. The only thing linking anything to that was that was on Wednesday. They launched that fire Wednesday morning.

And Tuesday night, they issued a statement saying they'd arrested a couple of quote-unquote terrorists on the Iran-Iraq border. up near Iraqi Kurdistan that confessed to terrorism and confessed to plotting to carry out attacks in Iran. And once again, no indication of who they are or anything. So maybe they're related. It would make sense if they were related. But who knows? They're very bad at describing what's going. on yeah seriously well i mean was there any other coverage of the damage from anybody other than

the iranians claiming that they were the ones who'd done it or anything like inside earbow that like oh yeah ron bombed us today and they blew up x y and z anything no no it really uh in fact looking for pictures the other night of the artillery strike all i could find was pictures of the rocket attacks from before when they hit the supposedly Israeli compound, which was just some Kurdish guy's house from the look of things, some Kurdish mansion. And who knows who they hit and why? And they certainly aren't forthcoming with the intelligence that would give us any indication

of what they're hoping to accomplish. I guess that's power for the course for the region because a lot of countries there fire into a neighboring country kill some people or don't kill some people and then just don't even talk about it. I mean, Israel attacks targets in Syria

at least once a week. and almost never do they say who they're after or why. The fact that they're nominally after Iran leads to a lot of Israeli media concluding that it must be Iran whenever they hit anything. But there's never really any good evidence for it. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally. done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other

options there are out there. It's my history of America's War on Terrorism from 1979 through today. Give it a listen and see if you agree. It's time to just come home. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. The audiobook. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along.

Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's Expandesigns.com. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think, Liberty. libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think

has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scotthorton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Rees Erlich. That's listen and think.com. All right. Now, what about the Turks? As I know, you know, since the beginning of Iraq War II back 19 years ago, or near the beginning of it anyway, maybe 18 years ago, the Turks, they bombed the PKK Turkish leftists in Kurdish leftists. I should say, in northern Iraqi Kurdistan from, you know, whenever they feel like it. But it looks like this is really escalating lately, huh?

Right. And it kind of predictably escalated because a few years ago, the PKK and Turkey reached a ceasefire that was supposed to lead to peace talks. And one of the big things about the ceasefire was, well, we need to send these PKK fighters someplace so that they can not be really visible. So they all went into northern Iraq. And then the ceasefire collapsed almost immediately. No real peace talks were ever held.

And then Turkey started attacking northern Iraq because it's like, well, that's where all these guys are. We have to get them. And they've been hitting... you know, you'll have a Turkish parliament will give them a six-month or a ten-month mission to go after Kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq, and that'll happen, and then it'll wind down, and you won't hear about it for a little while, and then that ten months is up, and then Parliament will approve another one. and it wasn't that long ago they approved a new one which had Turkey sending troops in

to go after the PKK again now the interesting thing this time around was they claimed Turkey claimed on day one of their newest defensive that they had complete support from the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and complete support from the Iraqi Kurdish regional government

and complete support from the Iraqi central government. Now, both of those groups came out the next day and said, that's not true. We never approved any of this. And Turkey summoned their ambassador to complain because they're saying, yes, yes, you did. We already said you did. And so there's a couple of years ago when Turkey was attacking northern Iraq,

The Iraqi government was really unhappy with it and complaining about violations of sovereignty, pushing for the UN to get involved. So their denial this time is believable, you're saying, I think. Right. This time, they're not complaining to the point where they're threatening to get the UN involved or anything. They're just kind of letting it happen, but they also want to be clear that they're not. supporting it. Yeah. Well, now what about the ruling Kurdish parties in northern Iraq? Because they are not the PKK, the Barzani and Talibani factions that rule there are not part of this

leftist movement based out of Turkey like the YPG in Syria is or Pijack in Iran. So are the PKK Turkish PKK Kurds hiding out in northern Iraq? Are they supposedly under the protection of the government of northern Iraqi Kurdistan or they're just out there in the wilderness out in the mountains where anybody can get to them, including the Turks. Yeah, they kind of

showed up during that ceasefire and everyone sort of let it happen. Northern northern Kurdistan in Iraq is pretty sparsely populated so I guess nobody really minded except

that when it all fell apart then they were getting attacked all the time. Now, you're right. The political groups, the Barzani groups and the like, they're not on good terms with the PKK. And in fact, they tend to be the other way. They tend to be semi-unfriendly with them. But during the ISIS fighting, when, you know, everything was kind of a chaotic situation. A lot of the

PKK groups sort of set up shop in the area around Mount Sinjar of the Yazidi territory in Kurdistan. And they backed the Yazidis when no one else was really inclined

to and they've stayed there. And now you've got these I mean the Yazidis are a tiny little religious minority and they have their own little militias that they've set up since the ISIS war went so badly for them. And they're aligned with the PKK,

but that's about the extent of the PKK's allies in Iraq. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, hopefully that doesn't escalate. I guess the good news is the PKK, especially these guys hiding in Iraq. They have no power or ability or friends to escalate on their behalf or anything.

So I guess the Turks will take what they're coming for and then they'll go and that'll be that. Yeah, the only question is how many more times is it going to happen? Because like you say, 19 years since the first time they did this, I mean, they made that movie, Turkey made that movie of about Turkish special forces going into northern Iraq. Not long after the Iraq war started, that was a very high-profile thing. And that war has just sort of dragged on, off and on. They're doing something. Nothing really gets accomplished. They'll say that they wiped out the group.

They aimed to wipe out Turkish defense ministerial clink, huge casualties sometimes. They'll say, oh, we bombed so many caves that we think PKK were hiding in. and hundreds killed but they never seem to be gone so it's always just one offensive leading to another yeah all right now uh one last issue i'm sorry i meant to get into this and we're still talking about the ridiculous iraqi parliament as it is i can't say parliament without cracking up uh tell me about this crazy new religious schism inside the shiite super majority in iraq that you wrote about here oh wow yes yes we should get into that that's another issue for uh the piece is called tensions lead to iraqiite violence uh from may eighth by jason did it's their news dot anti war

dot com yes and and uh of course intraciate violence in iraq isn't unheard of uh we'll see the solder block and some of the more pro-around blocks get into fights in the streets and things like that. This is a unique situation here, however, because this is internal and almost entirely religious. Sotter, as I mentioned before, his father was a very influential religious leader. and his main student, the man named Mahmoud Al-Sarki, he's a, I hate to say he's well thought of as a religious leader

because I think that might be overstating it. He's known, and he's known primarily because Sotter is known. And when he makes religious proclamations, they get covered all around Iran. like, oh, look at what this guy said. But he doesn't necessarily have a huge following that's going to do what he commands. But recently, his, one of his sermons, he was talking about the question of graves in Islam.

and it's it's kind of a complicated matter under the in the Quran they they kind of speak to keeping very simple graves to not turn those into sources of worship and Sarki is interpreting that as saying religious shrines that are built over a grave site are bad and should be torn down and he's not the only one to say this, but he's kind of one of the few influential people at all to say this.

Problem being that there are Shiite shrines all over Iraq because that's where Shi'ism was born. Right. Right. This is Iraq. You can't go to some of the cities like Najaf or Karbala without bumping into a Shiite shrine. Right.

I mean, they're all over. place so he's calling for those to be torn down as religiously forbidden and supporters of mottata al-sader the younger solder who's still around they've been just furious at this even the suggestion so far

no one's attacked the shrines there's been his followers have agitated a little for maybe doing something about the shrines to limit their size. But he doesn't really have the support to do anything. And then Sotter, who does

have a lot of followers, they went out and set fire to Sarki's offices, burned some of his buildings, and beat up some of his followers. So they look like they're trying to get out in front of anything happening to any shrines by

just beating up anybody that might be liable to do something. Yeah. Well, I don't know, man. It doesn't seem like, uh, see, I think George Bush, he said, um, see, the way you do hope is through a form of government. And then once you create a democracy there, then, um, everything will work out and everyone will just solve their problems through the parliamentary system and there won't be any more fighting and everything will be great. So I guess we're just sit around and wait for that to finally kick in. then yeah i i mean a lot of this is is wishful thinking at best but at the same time things like this uh call to demolish shrines nothing's ever going to come of that because like you say there's way too many shiite shrines in iraq for a sheite religious leader even one of

modest repute to get anything done about it. Nobody's going to listen to him as far as even trying. Man, I sure hope that's right. I mean, that sure could be a hell of a fight. But I'm betting on Muktaudder's mighty army.

You know, it comes down to it, dude. Yeah, and I feel like you know, you've got the other more traditional religious Shiite leaders in Parbala, the Sistani faction and the like. I mean, I feel like they get a lot of their followers and a lot of their visitors from all those shrines.

I don't think they're going to want to buck that trend either. Yeah, definitely not. Well, I don't know, definitely not. Well, I guess it all depends on what Sistani says, right? Has he taken a side in this? Do you know? I haven't heard if he has. I would be surprised if he did.

I would be surprised if we didn't hear about it because he's usually such a, he's the last word on almost everything religious among Shiites in Iraq. So if he said no, that would be the end of it. I would assume since we haven't heard, he hasn't said anything one way or another. Yeah. All right, man.

Well, I'll let you run. It's Friday afternoon here, and I'm sure you've got things to do. But I appreciate it, and it's been way too long since we've spoken. I'm sure I'm glad to have you back on the show, Jason. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, you guys, that is the great Jason did.

Senior News Editor at Antiwar.com. That's news dot anti-war. dot com the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org

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