Iraqi TV reports April 15-28, 2008

On April 26 the main Sunni party in the Iraqi parliament, The Iraqi Accordance Party (Hizb al-Tawafuq al-Iraqi, whose main component is the Iraqi Islamic Party, also known as the Muslim Brothers) was supposed to announce its candidates for ministerial positions in al-Maliki`s cabinet. Their return to cabinet positions was accompanied by criticism leveled by activists against their own party over the method employed to choose past candidates. Shaykh Khalaf al-`Alyan, a tribal shaykh and the head of one of the three faction in the party, expressed his desire to receive a ministerial post.

In mid April Iraq commemorated the 5th anniversary of the downfall of the Ba`th regime (April 9), but also other events: The massacre of the Kurds known as “Anfal”(April 14) and the execution in 1980 of the Shi’i religious leader Ayatullah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (April 8). At the same time, the trial of fifteen senior Ba’th party members, together with army and Republican Guard officers, is exposing the horrors of the suppression of the March 1991 Shi’i Intifada.

In the last weeks of March 2008, fierce battles erupted between government forces, added by the British and American air forces, and the Shi’i militia “Jaysh al-Mahdi” led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Fighting took place all over the South, especially in Basra and Madinat al-Sadr, a Sadrist stronghold in Baghdad. A ceasefire, signed on March 31 , ended the confrontation with what seems like a return to the status quo ante.

During the confrontation, I watched two Iraqi TV channels: al Iraqiyya, the official channel and al-Sharqiyya, an opposition private channel which is very popular in Iraq, but did not take a side in the conflict. The latter broadcasted from a rather different angle and gave more heed to speakers from the Sadrist movement. As far as I know, the Sadrists do not have a channel of their own yet, but many of their politicians appeared on the channels I covered.