Joel Wing's blog

On December 1, 2009 it was announced that the Iranian-backed, breakaway Sadrist group, the League of the Righteous, had ended its talks with Baghdad and would not run in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The cited reason was that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to release the League’s leader Qais Khazali who is being held by the Americans at Camp Cropper outside of Baghdad.

October 2009 saw the third straight month that Iraq’s oil exports dropped. Last month Iraq produced 2.50 million barrels of oil a day, and exported 1.87 million. That was down from September when the same amount was produced, but 1.95 million barrels a day were exported.

As reported before, Iraq’s oil production and exports have fluctuated up and down since the U.S. invasion in 2003. In 2009 Iraq has averaged 2.28 million barrels a day in overall production, and 1.83 million barrels in exports. Those are only estimates however by the Oil Ministry because hardly any of the industry has meters to get accurate numbers. In July 2009 the Board of Supreme Audit, one of three anti-corruption agencies in Iraq, reported the following about recording the Ministry’s production:

In November 2009 Human Rights Watch released a new report detailing the plight of minorities in Ninewa province entitled “On Vulnerable Ground.” The report covers the history of successive governments in Baghdad to Arabize Ninewa by pushing out minorities and Kurds and replacing them with Arabs, and then the ascendancy of Kurds there after the U.S. invasion. They turned around and tried to Kurdicize those same regions to advance their plans to annex the disputed territories there.

Parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman, a leader in the Kurdish Alliance, was quoted in the November 28, 2009 New York Times summing up the problems with Iraqi politics. When asked about the possibility that the country would hold elections past the January 31, 2009 deadline set in the constitution he replied, “So what? Nothing in Iraq is very legitimate.” Every major piece of legislation and decision in Iraq is endlessly delayed because of power politics and a zero-sum attitude by law makers.

On November 24, 2009 England began its third inquiry into the Iraq War, this time headed by John Chilcot. On November 26 Britain’s former ambassador to the United States Christopher Meyer testified.

On October 1, 2009 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially announced his State of Law list that would compete in the 2010 parliamentary elections.

On November 20, 2009 the head of the Sons of Iraq (SOI) in Baghdad’s Fadhil district, Adil al-Mashhadani, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court. He was charged with the murder of a girl whose mother complained to him about the violence in the neighborhood during the sectarian war. Mashhadani was originally arrested in late March 2009, which set off a day of fighting between Iraqi and U.S.

On November 8, 2009 Iraq’s parliament finally passed an election bill after weeks of delay. Ten days later Vice President Tarqi al-Hashemi vetoed it.

Iraq’s parliament has spent months debating and negotiating over the 2010 election law. While it has discussed several issues such as the status of Kirkuk and voting for overseas Iraqis, nothing has really been said about Iraq’s internally displaced. The result is that many will likely be disenfranchised as happened in the 2009 balloting.