Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazimi has just returned from his most significant and symbolic tour back to Baghdad.
Let me remind you that al-Kazimi received the post of Prime Minister of Iraq in May 2020, after Iraq went through a series of deep upheavals on its territory: mass protests last fall that demolished the previous government, Iranian general Qasem Soleimani's helicopter flights to the Green Zone of Baghdad, who chaired production meetings in the chair of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, audacious provocations by pro-Iranian militias and Kataib Hezbollah, then the murder of Soleimani and his loyal comrade al-Muhandis, the shelling of an American military base as an act of Iranian retribution to the Americans for the death of their beloved general ...
It would seem, what does Iraq have to do with it?
After all, all the showdowns take place between the United States and Iran.
But it's not a secret for anyone: since 2003, since the US invasion, Iraq has become a failed state, just a territory that was torn to shreds by the Americans and Iranians.
Actually, this story has not yet changed globally.
During a visit to London a day ago, al-Kazimi told The Guardian about how he is trying to find a middle ground between the US and Iran, which are fighting for influence inside Iraq:
“I’m walking on a tightrope between two tall buildings.
I am required not even to walk on a tightrope, but to ride a bicycle along it.
There is undoubtedly a certain bitterness of self-irony in this metaphor - the comparison reminds us of acrobats or trained bears under a circus dome.
However, so far al-Kazimi has succeeded in this dangerous circus trick better than anyone before him.
What he does in Iraq today is similar to the magician's tricks, and to mathematical calculation, and to a deep understanding of psychology of both the West and the East.
In May 2020, when he took over the leadership of the country, Iraq was in a disastrous state, he appointed the 73-year-old economic scientist Ali Allawi as finance minister, who said bluntly: either we are rebuilding the country in a year (applying an emergency reform plan), or Iraq as the end of the state.
Over the decade of turbulent times following the American invasion and Iranian presence, the number of civil servants in Iraq has grown from 1 million to 4 million, and the monthly fund for payments of pensions and other government payments amounted to € 4 billion.
“I expected to find up to $ 10 billion in the treasury of Iraq (the government usually always has enough money in the treasury to cover a couple of months of emergency situations), but I found only $ 1.5 billion,” the new finance minister was surprised when he took office.
$ 1.5 billion - everything that was left in the treasury by the officials who plundered it and the previous governments!
Moreover, Iraq is the second oil producer in OPEC.
Total on the territory of 435 thousand sq.
km, inhabited by about 43 million people, only $ 1.5 billion in the state treasury, about a dozen bases of the American coalition and thousands of members of pro-Iranian groups (the exact number of them can only be assumed, given that, in addition to the official members of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi "And" Hezbollah "cells, there are secret agents of influence embedded in the government and state Iraqi security structures).
Iraq receives gas and electricity from Iran, that is, dependence on Iran has been aggravated.
As soon as Iran moves the switch, Iraq will actually find itself in darkness.
The volume of Iranian exports to Iraq is as large as the trade turnover between the countries.
Roughly speaking, during the era of the most severe sanctions, Iraq served Iran as an obedient market, buying everything from it - from vegetables to gas, gasoline, electricity, and helping to sell oil and everything that was possible through its territory.
And pro-Iranian militias and groups with constant provocations "helped" the Iraqi leadership not to forget about Iranian interests, if suddenly the "head" turned to the side.
The Iranian monopoly of violence worked in Iraq for many years and did not fail.
Until al-Kazimi came to power.
In late June, he launched a major attack on the Shiite paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah, arresting 14 people (13 Iraqis and one Iranian) at dawn.
The arrest was carried out by the elite special forces of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CCS) of Iraq.
After some time, the arrested were released after a pause and serious explanatory work.
Before him, not a single Iraqi prime minister dared to do this.
The arrest was carried out on the eve of al-Kazimi's visit to Washington and a meeting with Trump (where the prime minister's decisiveness was met with a bang, a number of contracts were signed and promised a gradual withdrawal of American troops and a reduction in the grouping).
It is interesting here: the departure of the Americans is the goal of both General Soleimani and the imperials behind him from among the influential clergy and the IRGC.
So Kazimi really balances on the tightrope.
Kazimi's visit to Europe last week is even more significant than his meeting with Trump.
Attentive observers will understand that Kazimi is not an American candidate and that what is happening today in the ancient lands of Mesopotamia is the return of a pearl to the crown of the British Empire.
Yes, yes, Iraq is leaving the Americans (and slipping out of the Iranian clutches) under the protectorate of London, into their Eurasian project.
Just take a look at the biography of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Kazimi and see in what sequence he visited the countries of his European tour.
In general, conditionally, I could call al-Kazimy my colleague.
Despite his legal education, he was a journalist during Saddam's time and then switched to anti-Saddam rhetoric.
So active that he had to leave Iraq through the Kurdish provinces: first flee to Germany, and then settle in London.
He has written articles and edited Al Monitor.
Then for seven years he headed the Iraq Memory Foundation in London.
What he did for these seven years, besides the fact that he headed the fund, one can only guess, but it is clear that this time was spent wisely: after returning to Iraq, he soon became the head of national intelligence.
And quite recently, along with the most valuable archive of Saddam Hussein's regime returned to Iraq, interesting facts surfaced.
For example, it became known that 5 million pages of internal documents of the Baath party, discovered by the Americans a few months after their invasion in 2003 in a flooded basement in Baghdad, were given to two Iraqis for decryption, and one of them - Mustafa al -Kazim.
48 tons of documents were removed and stored at the Hoover Institution, Stanford's research center.
These documents contained everything: all of Saddam's secret agents, the entire base of the criminals, denunciations from ordinary citizens against neighbors, executions, the people who carried them out.
“The Baathists have documented everything from jokes to executions,” said Abbas Kazim, director of the Atlantic Council's Iraqi Initiative **, who reviewed the documents.
- But Iraq is not ready to reveal the truth yet.
These are too shocking documents that will now make it difficult for Iraqi citizens to reconcile. ”
Citizens are not ready for the truth, for it will show who was the Baath secret agent, who participated in denunciations and executions, who was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
But this archive is an impeccable surgical scalpel for opening up internal abscesses and bringing to life many of the "patriots" who have played too much.
This seems to be skillfully used by the Prime Minister who had access to the archives.
Because miracles, previously unseen, began to happen in Iraq.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, for example, the undisputed leader of the Shiites, suddenly met with the envoy of the UN Secretary General and agreed to the presence of UN observers in the new parliamentary elections on June 6 in Iraq, which caused shock in Tehran.
Ali Sistani himself hails from the Iranian Najaf, and it was he who at one time announced the mobilization in Iraq against ISIS *, activating in one day 200 thousand bayonets, who became next to the soldiers of General Soleimani.
Taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, Kazimi closed Iraq's borders with Iran and set up security posts that Iraq will not remember, probably since 2003.
Those few pilgrims who did move around Iraq during Arba'in were inspected by special brigades, whose purpose was not to miss the infiltrated fighters, dressed in women's veils and hijabs (similar videos from the raids were posted on their accounts by the Iraqi security forces).
By the elections on June 6, 2021, al-Kazimi closed the country and even blocked Iranian money, payments for electricity and gas in Iraqi banks, friendly promising to return everything without fail, but "not right now", because the country has a financial crisis and Trump's new sanctions against banking sector of Iran.
This maneuver narrows the field for Iranian provocations in Iran and makes it possible to prepare for the elections, which, by the way, will be held by biometric registration of citizens.
To weed out dead souls and minimize any manipulation.
Persian media today show a truck at the Iranian-Iraqi border, with tons of spoiled tomatoes spilling onto the ground.
Iraqis refused to accept vegetables from Iran, tainted by rain and refrigeration.
This is also a bit revolutionary: in the past, Iraq wordlessly accepted everything that a proud Persian neighbor and "big brother" sent him.
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Publication from BBC NEWS فارسی (@bbcpersian) Oct 22, 2020 8:38 am PDT
But back to Europe.
If he discussed plans in the defense sector with Macron Kazyi, then with Merkel - the development of the electric power industry with the participation of German companies.
Everywhere Kazimi asked for investments and financial assistance, and everywhere he received assurances of its receipt.
On Thursday Kazimi is a British citizen, by the way!
- flew to London.
This can be called a "return to their native land."
He met with the Foreign Minister, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and, finally, with Prince Charles, which speaks of the strategic importance of both Iraq and al-Kazimi to the British crown.
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There Kazimi announced his plan of radical economic reforms and met with the highest approval.
It was London, which has sheltered a promising journalist many years ago, has released back into the world a high-class professional, a conductor of British political style: cunning, caution, secret diplomacy - who has worked in a region where pragmatism has long been not heard behind rocket attacks and threats.
The British Museum, as a sign of support for Kazimi, is preparing to send a unique collection of artifacts to Iraq: sculptures, wall murals and other things that were still kept in London.
The collection will arrive in Baghdad early this year.
This is how a torn Iraq recalls its former glory of Mesopotamia and the Abbasid empire.
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In London, Kazimi struck a poetic comparison:
- I dance with snakes every day, but I'm looking for a flute to control these snakes.
I wonder what will Tehran and Washington answer to this poetics?
* "Islamic State" (IS, ISIS) - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.
** "Atlantic Council" (Atlantic Council of the United States) - an organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the General Prosecutor's Office of 25.07.2019.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.