Anitchrist Calls For Protest Of Iraq Government

Antichrist Urges Followers To Protest Iraq Government

Iraq’s al-Sadr calls for fresh anti-Maliki protests

http://www.andrewtheprophet.com

Sadr calls for overthrow of al Maliki

Tuesday, March 11, 2014
BAGHDAD – Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has called for a day of mass protests next Monday against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki amid mounting tensions between the two leaders.
On Monday, thousands of al-Sadr’s supporters staged demonstrations across central and southern Iraq.
The protests followed earlier statements by al-Maliki in which he described al-Sadr as “politically ignorant and unaware of the provisions of the Iraqi constitution.”
Al-Maliki’s statements came after al-Sadr accused him of failing to abide by the teachings of Shiite scholars through his “mismanagement” of the cabinet.
“We reaffirm the importance of active participation in a [second] demonstration… which will be another step towards standing up for the oppressed and denouncing injustice and dictatorship,” according to a Tuesday statement issued by al-Sadr’s office.
“Al-Sadr appreciates the voice of the masses, which demonstrated [Monday] against the prime minister’s transgressions against the leader [al-Sadr],” the statement read.
In February, al-Sadr announced plans to withdraw from political life to “preserve the good name of the al-Sadr family… and avoid sedition… inside and outside Iraq.”
His announcement came on the heels of a wave of popular protests against recently passed legislation raising retirement benefits for top civil servants, lawmakers and government officials.
Following his announcement to quit politics, al-Sadr lashed out at al-Maliki and parliament, asserting: “Iraq is reeling under a dishonest government while an out-of-touch parliament cannot defend itself.”
Political tension has mounted ahead of April parliamentary polls in Iraq, which has seen a recent uptick in violence in capital Baghdad and the western provinces.
Copyright © 2014 Anadolu Agency

The "Symbol" of Power

The “Symbol” of Power

Why states go nuclear : An ‘unconventional’ perspective

The “Symbol” of Power

Some experts also contend that states seek to develop nuclear capability because nuclear weapons are seen as serving higher symbolic values and are a prerequisite for achieving ‘great power status’ (Ital. added)
Why do states build nuclear weapons? Since the early years of the Cold War, nuclear experts have been grappling with this question to which there is not a single right answer. World leaders have repeatedly expressed their opposition to the use of nuclear weapons. Despite this, states continue to devote enormous human and financial resources to develop these weapons of mass destruction. Nine countries have nuclear weapons to date and it is estimated that 35-40 countries have the necessary scientific knowledge and infrastructure to acquire them on an emergency basis if they so choose. Today’s nuclear weapons are much more powerful in terms of destructive capability than those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Just 30 to 40 nuclear weapons could completely wipe out the entire population of Pakistan. Exposure to the radioactivity produced by nuclear explosions may also cause the deaths of millions of people in neighbouring countries. Given these threats, what are the principal ‘desires’ or ‘fears’ that drive the expensive nuclear programmes pursued by different states? The answer to this question has significant implications for the long-term future of international security. Many scholars offer a consensus view that nations choose to go nuclear because they must balance against any rival state that has developed nuclear weapons. According to the neorealist school of thought, an anarchical international system exists and states, therefore, must rely on ‘self-help’ to protect their sovereignty and national security. The Soviet Union acquired nuclear capability because its principal adversary state, the US, already possessed nuclear weapons. China developed nuclear weapons because it was threatened with possible nuclear attack by the US at the end of the Korean War.
Analogously, Pakistan chose the nuclear path only in response to the 1974 Indian nuclear test. Even after 1974, Pakistan proposed to India the establishment of a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in South Asia through a United Nations General Assembly Resolution. However, due to India’s resistance and aggressive designs in the region, Pakistani policymakers gave the go ahead to acquire nuclear weapons capability. A nuclear India with its massive conventional military capability posed not only a serious threat to Pakistan but also to other countries in the region. Against this backdrop, the proposal to denuclearise South Asia was discussed again in the final document of the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. However, India continues to oppose the establishment of a NWFZ because of its unwarranted obsession with China.
In the post-Cold War period, a number of nuclear experts have challenged the conventional wisdom behind developing nukes and have offered a different perspective. They are of the view that focusing on security imperatives as the sole cause of proliferation wrongly assumes that states are monolithic actors. This approach does not explain the cases of nuclear proliferation in countries where nuclear weapons serve other parochial domestic objectives of some institutions or individual bureaucratic actors. Strong vested interests in a number of countries envision nuclear weapons as political tools used to advance their specific interests that may or may not be consistent with broader national interests. In Pakistan, the development of nuclear weapons, along with a vast nuclear security infrastructure over the past three decades has enhanced many times the importance of the military establishment. On the other side of the border, there is firm evidence to suggest that Indian civilian governments were never in favour of developing nuclear weapons but India’s scientific community, under the leadership of Homi Bhabba, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), constantly lobbied to persuade Indira Gandhi to take the decision to acquire nuclear capability.
Even when Indira Gandhi made the final decision in favour of building nuclear weapons, she consulted only with a very small circle of personal advisors. Senior defence and foreign affairs officials were kept in the dark for too long and they were informed only a few days before the nuclear test in 1974. Such a pattern of decision-making suggests that in the development of India’s nuclear programme, security arrangements were of secondary importance. It is also important to recognise that Indira Gandhi decided to go for nuclear tests at a time when public support for her government had fallen to an all-time low due to domestic unrest. Thus, the Gandhi government considered it a major opportunity to divert public attention and increase its public standing. There is no incontrovertible evidence to support the myth created by Indian policymakers that their nuclear weapons programme was ‘security-driven’. Carnegie Endowment expert George Perkovich opined that “the leaders of the strategic weapons establishment, an enclave of scientists and engineers in India’s defence research and atomic energy institutions…for five decades had been pushing India to join the exclusive club of nuclear weapon states.”
Some experts also contend that states seek to develop nuclear capability because nuclear weapons are seen as serving higher symbolic values and are a prerequisite for achieving ‘great power status’. This approach assumes that national decisions are always influenced by certain norms and shared beliefs about what makes any given state strong and modern. Putting it another way, Stanford University Professor Scott Sagan says that nuclear weapons serve “important symbolic functions — both shaping and reflecting a state’s identity”. This sense of national identity is based in part on a country’s observation of other states’ actions. Common people in countries like India, Pakistan and Israel think that nuclear weapons are necessary to meet their national destinies. Despite much evidence to the contrary, they continue to feel that the possession of nuclear weapons has made them more venerated and relevant in the comity of nations.
In the 1950s, France’s Charles de Gaulle actively worked on formulating a general public perception in his country that the Soviet Union constituted a grave threat to their national security. Due to their long and troubled history of mutual conflicts with Germany, the French also viewed both East and West Germany with deep suspicion. In addition, de Gaulle also envisioned a historic great power status for France in European affairs during the Cold War. And, in his view, the best means to achieve that status was to acquire nuclear capability.
In a nutshell, it can be said that states’ decisions to pursue or not to pursue nuclear weapons are influenced by a host of factors. Although national security considerations have played a considerable role in the case of some countries choosing this path, a holistic approach can better help gain a complete understanding of the nuclear proliferation puzzle.

The Race To Armageddon

Israel’s nuclear weapons and the Middle East ‘arms race’

The Race to Armageddon

Published: March 9
Regarding Richard McKee’s March 6 letter, which blamed Israel’s purported nuclear weapons capability for touching off a nuclear arms race in the Mideast:
The real issue is not that Israel armed itself first but whether another Middle Eastern power with nuclear weapons would have acted as responsibly as Israel has acted. Since it is presumed to have armed itself with nuclear weapons in the mid-1960s, Israel has fought three major wars and several smaller military campaigns without threatening its enemies with nuclear weapons, much less using them. Can Islamic Iran, which has so often called for the end of the Jewish state, be counted on to show such restraint?
Richard McKee questioned “unproven assertions regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and ambitions.” Despite evidence, he is sanguine about Iran’s intentions. Furthermore, he claimed that Israel, which reportedly has nuclear weapons, has “sparked whatever regional nuclear arms race may eventually occur” in its part of the world.
I’d like to put this assertion in relatable terms. Let’s say you live in a neighborhood where you are outnumbered 40 to 1 by people whose attitude toward you ranges from unfriendly to murderous. You can’t move — you won’t move — because it’s your home, you’ve made it a fine home, and you’re caring for a lot of family and friends who have moved in with you from other inhospitable neighborhoods.
So you stay, though you are repeatedly threatened, and not just with words. On a good day, the bad neighbors throw rocks at your house. But they also have sometimes gotten inside your house and attacked your family. You decide to buy a gun. You keep it at home and hidden, and you hope to never have to use it because that would mean that your very life is near to being ended.
If there then is a proliferation of guns in the neighborhood, are you responsible?

The US Increases Its Nuclear Spending

U.S. Increases Nuclear Weapons Spending, Violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

By David Swanson
Global Research, March 07, 2014

US increases its nuclear budget in 2014.

So now we (or at least the 0.03% of us who care to hunt for it) discover that U.S. military spending is not actually being cut at all, but increasing. Also going up: U.S. nuclear weapons spending. Some of the new nukes will violatetreaties, but the entire program violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which requires disarmament, not increased armament. The U.S. policy of first-strike and the U.S. practice of informing other nations that “all options are on the table” also violate the U.N. Charter’s ban on threatening force.
But do nuclear weapons, by the nature of their technology, violate the U.S. Constitution? Do they violate the basic social contract and all possibility of self-governance? Thus argues a new book called Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom by Elaine Scarry. It’s not unheard of for people to see out-of-control nuclear spending as a symptom of out-of-control military spending, itself a symptom of government corruption, legalized bribery, and a militaristic culture. Scarry’s argument suggests a reversal: the root of all this evil is not the almighty dollar but the almighty bomb.
The argument runs something like this. The primary purpose of the social contract is to create peace and prevent war and other injury. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 11) bans the making of war without the approval of both houses of Congress. This approval was to be required not just for an existing military to attack another country, but for a military to be raised at all — standing armies not being anticipated. And it was understood that an army would not be raised and deployed into war unless the citizen-soldiers went willingly, their ability to dissent by desertion not needing to be spelled out (or, let us say, their ability to dissent by mass-desertion, as desertion in the war that led to the Constitution was punished by death).
And yet, because this point was so crucial to the entire governmental project, Scarry argues, it was in fact spelled out — in the Second Amendment. Arms — that is 18th century muskets — were to be freely distributed among the people, not concentrated in the hands of a king. “Civilian” control over the military meant popular control, not presidential. The decision to go to war would have to pass through the people’s representatives in Congress, and through the people as a whole in the form of soldiers who might refuse to fight. By this thinking, had the Ludlow Amendment, to create a public referendum before any war, passed in the 1930s, it would have been redundant.
Before the 1940s were over, in Scarry’s view, a Ludlow Amendment wouldn’t have been worth the paper it was written on, as the existence of nuclear weapons erases Constitutional checks on war. With nuclear weapons, a tiny number of people in a government — be it 1 or 3 or 20 or 500 — hold the power to very quickly and easily kill millions or billions of human beings, and other species, and very likely themselves in the process. “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both,” said Louis Brandeis. We may have democracy, or we may have thermonuclear bombs, but we can’t have both, says Elaine Scarry.
Each of the series of presidents beginning with Truman and running up through Nixon is known to have repeatedly come close to choosing to use nuclear bombs, something the public has learned of, each time, only decades after the fact. No more recent president has said he didn’t come close; we may very well learn their secrets on the usual schedule. When you add to that insanity, the long string of accidents, mistakes, and misunderstandings, the damage of the testing and the waste, and the repeated ability of ploughshares activists (and therefore anybody else) to walk right up to U.S. nuclear weapons to protest them, it’s amazing that life exists on earth. But Scarry’s focus is on what the new ability to kill off a continent at the push of a button has done to presidential power.
While wars since World War II have been non-nuclear, apart from depleted uranium weapons, they have also been endless and undeclared. Because presidents can nuke nations, they and Congress and the public have assumed that a president on his or her own authority can attack nations with non-nuclear weapons too. Now, I suspect that the military industrial complex, corrupt elections, and nuclear thinking all feed off each other. I don’t want a single person who’s trying to clean up election spending or halt fighter-jet production to stop what they’re doing. But the possible influence of nuclear thinking on U.S. foreign policy is intriguing. Once a president has been given more power than any king has ever had, one might expect some people to do exactly what they’ve done and treat him like a king in all but name.
Scarry believes that we’re suffering from the false idea that we’re in a permanent emergency, and that in an emergency there’s no time to think. In fact, the Constitutional constraints on war were intended precisely for emergencies, Scarry argues, and are needed precisely then. But an emergency that can be dealt with by raising an army is perhaps different from an emergency that will leave everyone on earth dead by tomorrow either with or without the U.S. government having the opportunity to contribute its measure of mass-killing to the general apocalypse. The latter is, of course, not an emergency at all, but an insistence on glorified ignorance to the bitter end. An emergency that allows time to raise an army is also different from an emergency involving 21st century “conventional” weapons, but not nearly as different as we suppose. Remember the desperate urgency to hit Syria with missiles last September that vanished the moment Congress refused to do it? The mad rush to start a war before anyone can look too closely at its justifications does, I think, benefit from nuclear thinking — from the idea that there is not time to stop and think.
So, what can we do? Scarry believes that if nukes were eliminated, Congress could take charge of debates over wars again. Perhaps it could. But would it approve wars? Would it approve public financing, free air time, and open elections? Would it ban its members from profiting from war? Would people killed in a Congressionally declared war be any less dead?
What if the Second Amendment as Scarry understands it were fulfilled to some slight degree, that is if weapons were slightly more equitably distributed as a result of the elimination of nukes? The government would still have all the aircraft carriers and missiles and bombs and predator drones, but it would have the same number of nukes as the rest of us. Wouldn’t compliance with the Second Amendment require either the madness of giving everybody a missile launcher or the sanity of eliminating non-nuclear weapons of modern war-making along with the nuclear ones?
I think the historical argument that Scarry lays out against the concentration of military power in the hands of a monarch is equally a case either for distributing that power or for eliminating it. If large standing armies are the greatest danger to liberty, as James Madison supposed on his slave plantation, isn’t that an argument against permanently stationing troops in 175 nations with or without nukes, as well as against militarizing local police forces at home? If unjustified war and imprisonment are the greatest violations of the social contract, must we not end for-profit mass incarceration by plea bargain along with for-profit mass-murder?
I think Scarry’s argument carries us further in a good direction than she spells out in the book. It’s a thick book full of extremely lengthy background information, not to say tangents. There’s a wonderful account of the history of military desertion. There’s a beautiful account of Thomas Hobbes as peace advocate. Much of this is valuable for its own sake. My favorite tangent is a comparison between Switzerland and the United States. Switzerland decided that air-raid shelters would help people survive in a nuclear war. While opposing and not possessing nuclear weapons, Switzerland has created shelters for more than the total number of people in the country. The United States claimed to have concluded that shelters would not work, and then spent more on building them exclusively for the government than it spent on all variety of needs and services for the rest of us. The nuclear nation has behaved as a monarchy, while the non-nuclear nation may preserve a remnant of humanity to tell the tale.
Scarry ends her book by stating that Article I and the Second Amendment are the best tools she’s found for dismantling nuclear weapons, but that she’d like to hear of any others. Of course, mass nonviolent action, education, and organizing are tools that will carry any campaign beyond the confines of legal argumentation, but as long as we’re within those confines, I’ll throw out a proposal: Comply with the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It is far newer, clearer, and less ambiguous than the Constitution. It is, under the Constitution, unambiguously the Supreme Law of the Land as a treaty of the U.S. government. It applies in other nations as well, including a number of other nuclear weapons nations. It clarifies our thinking on the worst practice our species has developed, one that will destroy us all, directly or indirectly, if not ended, with or without nuclear: the practice of war.
The treaty that I recommend remembering bans war. When we begin to think in those terms, we won’t see torture as the worst war crime, as Scarry suggests, but war itself as the worst crime of war. We won’t suggest that killing is wrong because it’s “nonbattlefield,” as Scarry does at one point. We might question, as Scarry seems not to, that Hawaii was really part of the United States in 1941, or that U.S. torture really ended when Obama was elected. I’m quibbling with tiny bits in a large book, but only because I want to suggest that the arguments that best reject nuclear weaponry reject all modern war weaponry, its possession, and its use.

The New Cold War

Best And Worst Case Scenarios for Ukraine Crisis: World Peace And Nuclear War

The new Ukrainian cold war

No one yet knows how the Ukraine crisis will play out. Indeed, the whole story is a lesson in the perils of prediction. Already we have a classic: “Putin’s Bluff? U.S. Spies Say Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” published February 27, just as Russian troops were entering Crimea. But considering the best and worst cases highlights some important opportunities to make the most of the situation.
Here’s the short version: The best case scenario has the Ukraine crisis being resolved diplomatically through increased Russia-Europe cooperation, which would be a big step towards world peace. The worst case scenario has the crisis escalating into nuclear war between the United States and Russia, causing human extinction.
Let’s start with the worst case scenario, nuclear war involving the American and Russian arsenals. How bad would that be? Put it this way: Recent analysis finds that a “limited” India-Pakistan nuclear war could kill two billion people via agricultural declines from nuclear winter. This “limited” war involves just 100 nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia combine to possess about 16,700 nuclear weapons. Humanity may not survive the aftermath of a U.S.-Russia nuclear war.
It seems rather unlikely that the U.S. and Russia would end up in nuclear war over Ukraine. Sure, they have opposing positions, but neither side has anywhere near enough at stake to justify such extraordinary measures. Instead, it seems a lot more likely that the whole crisis will get resolved with a minimum of deaths. However, the story has already taken some surprising plot twists. We cannot rule out the possibility of it ending in direct nuclear war.
A nuclear war could also occur inadvertently, i.e. when a false alarm is misinterpreted as real, and nuclear weapons are launched in what is believed to be a counterattack. There have been several alarmingly close calls of inadvertent U.S.-Russia nuclear war over the years. Perhaps the most relevant is the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident. A rocket carrying scientific equipment was launched off northern Norway. Russia detected the rocket on its radar and interpreted it as a nuclear attack. Its own nuclear forces were put on alert and Boris Yeltsin was presented the question of whether to launch Russia’s nuclear weapons in response. Fortunately, Yeltsin and the Russian General Staff apparently sensed it was a false alarm and declined to launch. Still, the disturbing lesson from this incident is that nuclear war could begin even during periods of calm.
With the Ukraine crisis, the situation today is not calm. It is even more tense than last year, when the United States was considering military intervention in Syria. By coincidence, Israel had a pre-scheduled ballistic missile defense test during that brief period. Despite the tensions, Israel conducted its test, launching two missiles from the Mediterranean towards Israel. Russian radar again picked up the launch, initially suspecting it was the start of military action before Israel set the record straight. This incident could have escalated, especially because the U.S. and Russia had opposing positions on Syria. Fortunately, the confusion was quickly resolved and no escalation occurred.
Russia and the U.S. can reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear war by keeping their nuclear detection and launch forces at normal or day-to-day levels of alert. This means that the forces will be less likely to falsely interpret any detected signal as an attack, and less likely to mistakenly launch an attack in response to a false alarm. Using a normal posture instead of a heightened nuclear alert level gives both sides more time to correctly interpret what signals they detect. This could help prevent an inadvertent nuclear war. Meanwhile, all parties involved can also take reasonable steps to reduce tension levels. This can be achieved by emphasizing diplomatic solutions instead of military interventions, and by preventing any military activities from escalating beyond Ukraine. Everyone should hope that such steps are taken.
And now for the best case scenario. There is compelling reason to believe that the Ukraine crisis could end with the world being much safer and at peace than it was before the crisis, if certain steps are taken. Perhaps these steps could have been taken without the crisis. But the crisis has done an excellent job at focusing global attention on Ukraine and its challenges. Let no crisis go to waste.
Ukraine’s crisis is ultimately driven by its status as a geopolitical anomaly. Ukraine does not fit neatly within established geopolitical divisions. It is a border country, straddling the European Union bloc and the Russian bloc. Likewise, the country’s population is split approximately in half by people who want to integrate with Europe and people who want to integrate with Russia. The recently deposed President Viktor Yanukovych is among those in Ukraine who have indicated interest in both the EU and the Russian-led Customs Union. But the EU and CU would not accommodate dual status, and now Yanukovych is in exile and the country in chaos.
It is unfair that Ukraine is in this unfortunate geopolitical predicament and must suffer the resulting political crisis. But perhaps in crisis there can be opportunity. Perhaps now the EU and CU can work towards a special dual status for Ukraine. If Europe and Russia are both serious about a peaceful resolution to the crisis that respects Ukraine’s democratic wishes and territorial sovereignty, dual status may be the best option. Dual status would meanwhile help bring Europe and Russia closer together in peace and economic cooperation. We have today a great opportunity to put the Cold War further into the past.
Supposing a cooperative arrangement for Ukraine is feasible, one might ask, Who loses? The obvious answer is China, which could feel threatened by a unified NATO-Russian bloc. Other countries may feel similarly. To reduce this downside, EU-Russian dialog should seek input from China and any other interested countries. Such dialog is consistent with broader efforts towards the mutual security and understanding that some posit as important to achieving peace in a world without any nuclear weapons. And so a cooperative Ukrainian arrangement can work at the global scale too. For the sake of us all, this option should be pursued now.
So which will it be: best case, worst case, or somewhere in between? Much depends on Russia’s motives, in particular whether it is seeking to keep the peace, as it claims, or if it has an aggressive, expansionist objective. Hopefully it is the former, in which case there is a good chance of reaching a diplomatic agreement without people dying. And I think that the former is more likely. But until the world knows for sure, it should remain vigilant. There is simply too much at stake.

Antichrist's Men Increase Sectarian Violence

Who Are the Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq Islamists in Iraq?
By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

http://www.andrewtheprophet.com

The antichrist’s men

Posted 2014-03-06 22:53 GMT
While much attention is given to Sunni militant groups operating in Iraq on account of the overall revived insurgency, there is little interest in Shi’a groups with armed wings. One of the most important of these latter organizations is Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq
Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (League of the People of Righteousness) or AHH originated during the height of the Iraq War as a breakaway led by Qais al-Khazali, who rebelled against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
On account of this split, AAH is understandably resented heavily by Sadrists in general, and on Sadrist forums, one can regularly find posts referring to AAH as “Asa’ib Ahl al-Batil” (“League of the People of Falsehood”). Occasionally, AAH has engaged in armed clashes with demobilized Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad.
Yet the tensions go beyond mere personal differences between Sadr and Khazali caused by the break-off, for there is also an ideological separation. To be sure, both Sadrists and AAHs can be broadly defined as Shi’a Islamist in seeking a role for Islamic law in politics.
However, although the Sadrists maintain connections with clerics based in Iran (most notably Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri) and have taken political advice from Iran in agreeing to form a coalition with Maliki’s State of Law bloc following the 2010 elections, the Sadrists- and Sadr himself- are ultimately motivated by a nationalist desire to emerge as the leaders of Iraq’s Shi’a community.
In contrast, AAH can be seen as a virtual proxy of Iran, even if one does not want to accept the claims that it receives funding and/or armed support from Tehran. For instance, AAH emphasizes very strongly its reverence for Ayatollah Khamenei as a spiritual and political guide, whereas this discourse is notably absent in Sadrist circles. That is to say, AAH is firmly in favor of the Iranian political system of wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the jurists) as envisaged by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Further indicative of AAH’s status as an Iranian proxy is the fact that whereas Sadr has thus far resisted calls to deploy demobilized Mahdi Army fighters to Syria, AAH- under Tehran’s orders- is deploying fighters in a variety of areas of Syria to fight the rebels, including Damascus and Aleppo, under the banner of Liwa Kafeel Zainab in the latter.
Note in particular AAH’s use of Muqatada al-Sadr’s father’s image on ‘martyrdom’ announcements in Syria: while the group follows Iranian wilayat al-faqih, it is also claiming to be the true heirs of Sadrist politics.
This serves as another point of tension between AAH and the Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers, even as many of the latter may have sympathy with the fight against groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) in Syria while not actively going out there or recruiting others.
On the domestic level, besides seeking to build its own influence with a political wing through approaches such as outreach to southern tribal sheikhs, AAH regularly participates in Iranian-devised political events, such as al-Quds Day, joining on such occasions in marches in Baghdad and other locations with fellow pro-Iranian proxy groups such as Hezbollah in Iraq, which is led by Wathiq al-Battat.
Battat- founder of the Mukhtar Army militia last year- currently faces an arrest warrant from the central government, and has made clear that in a war between Iraq and Iran, he would take Iran’s side.
Nevertheless, whereas Maliki’s government is broadly hostile to Wathiq al-Battat and the Mukhtar Army, the evidence points to a broad tolerance of AAH. On political grounds there is some logic to Maliki’s approach in that it allows him to play AAH and the Sadrists against each other, realizing that the Sadrists are ultimately his rivals.
However, the problem is that despite apparent gestures of an abandonment of armed struggle following the U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of 2011, AAH maintains an armed wing, illustrated foremost by the armed deployments to Syria.
Within Iraq, more reports have emerged recently of AAH mobilizing in more areas to take on those it views as being behind the rise of ISIS. Though AAH denies that it has a sectarian agenda in pursuing these operations, there have long been concerns- particularly in the heavily mixed province of Diyala- that its activities are triggering displacements of Sunni Arab residents with raids and threats on Sunni Arab homes and property.
This is so despite the fact that politics at the Diyala provincial council level have seen cross-sectarian alliances, as the Sadrist Ahrar bloc in the province has supported the Sunni Arab governor Omar al-Humairi who was deposed from power last month by other Shi’a opponents working in concert with Humairi’s rivals within the fragmented Iraqiya coalition, accusing him of corruption and aiding Kurdish expansionist ambitions in Diyala province.
Elsewhere, there have been allegations of AAH involvement in the Iraqi security forces’ operations in Anbar that are currently trying to reassert federal control over the Ramadi and Fallujah areas. Indeed, early in January, it was claimed that an AAH commander who had fought in Syria- Anwar al-Bahadil- was killed fighting in Anbar.
If the Maliki government wishes to prevent fragile sectarian relations from deteriorating further, AAH will have to be reined in like the Mukhtar Army. The group’s agenda is ultimately serving foreign sectarian interests- namely, Iran’s desire to become leader of the region’s Shi’a- and will only continue to provoke sectarian killings and revenge killings.

Ukraine Has Third Largest Nuclear Arsenal

Ukraine has the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world

(CNN) — Russia’s military occupation of Ukrainian territory on the Crimean peninsula constitutes a blatant violation of the commitments that Moscow undertook in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Ukraine. The United States and United Kingdom, the other two signatories, now have an obligation to support Ukraine and penalize Russia.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine found itself holding the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, including some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads that had been designed to attack the United States. Working in a trilateral dialogue with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators, American diplomats helped to broker a deal —the January 1994 Trilateral Statement — under which Ukraine agreed to transfer all of the strategic nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination and to dismantle all of the strategic delivery systems on its territory.
Kiev did this on the condition that it receive security guarantees or assurances. The Budapest Memorandum, signed on December 5, 1994, by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom (the latter three being the depositary states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that is, the states that receive the accession documents of other countries that join the treaty) ) laid out a set of assurances for Ukraine. These included commitments to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders; to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence; and to refrain from economic coercion against Ukraine.
The memorandum bundled together a set of assurances that Ukraine already held from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) Final Act, United Nations Charter and Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Ukrainian government nevertheless found it politically valuable to have these assurances in a Ukraine-specific document.
Words matter, and a big question at the time arose over whether to use the term “guarantees” or “assurances” in the memorandum. The United States provides guarantees to allies, such as NATO member states; the term implies a military commitment. In the early 1990s, neither the George H. W. Bush administration nor the Clinton administration was prepared to extend a military commitment to Ukraine— and both felt that, even if they wanted to, the Senate would not produce the needed two-thirds vote for consent to ratification of such a treaty.
The Budapest Memorandum thus was negotiated as a political agreement. It refers to assurances, not defined, but less than a military guarantee. U.S. negotiators —myself among them — discussed this point in detail with Ukrainian counterparts so that there would be no misunderstanding.
What is taking place today in Crimea can only be described as a Russian military occupation. The Russian Black Sea Fleet and its associated units have had bases in Crimea since 1991, by agreement with Ukraine. But the agreement does not allow for the Russian military, which has poured thousands of additional troops onto the peninsula over the past several days, to take control of Crimea.
These Russian actions are in blatant violation of the Budapest Memorandum, as well as Russia’s commitments under the CSCE Final Act and a 1997 bilateral Ukraine-Russia treaty. As signatories, the United States and United Kingdom have an obligation to respond, even if they are not obligated to respond with military force.
Washington and London should act in two ways. First, they should work with other European Union member states to support Ukraine. That means political engagement, such as Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit today to Kiev. They should also assemble a financial package with the International Monetary Fund to extend credits to Ukraine. That can give the country some breathing room as it undertakes critical reforms to put its economic house in order.
Second, Washington and London should work with the European Union and others to impose political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on Moscow unless and until Russia ceases its violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This has begun. On Sunday, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan announced they were suspending preparations to take part in the G8 summit to be hosted in June in Sochi by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Other steps have been taken, and still others are being planned.
The West should aim to impose significant costs on Russia that will lead Putin to rethink his actions. That likely will prove difficult, but there can be no business as usual with Moscow.
A strong response is important for settling Ukraine’s current crisis. It also matters for the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. Security assurances were key to bringing Kiev to agree to get rid of its nuclear arms. If Washington and London do not stand by the Budapest Memorandum now, it would discredit the idea of such assurances. That would be unfortunate, as security assurances could play a role in defusing nuclear proliferation cases, such as Iran.