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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Sunnis hint at peace deal |
| 2005-05-15 |
| The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week. The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated much of the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to join in the political system, including the writing of a permanent constitution. But the political feuding that delayed the formation of the government for nearly three months after the elections has so far blocked the kind of concessions the Sunnis are demanding. In particular, the Americans are pressing for Shiite hard-liners in the new Iraqi government to consider conciliatory gestures that would include allowing former Baath Party members to serve in the government, granting pensions to former army officers who served under Mr. Hussein and setting up courts that would try detainees seized in the anti-insurgency drive. Many of the detainees have been held for a year or more without legal recourse. The government that took office almost two weeks ago under Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had a faltering start, leaving several cabinet posts earmarked for Sunni Arabs vacant, then filling them with officials - including a defense minister - who were rejected by some hard-line Sunni representatives. These critics have said that the nominees, though Sunni Arabs, were effectively pawns of the two Iran-backed religious parties at the head of the Shiite alliance that won the elections and now dominates the government. The government has 35 cabinet members, 7 of them Sunnis. That makes their representation nearly proportionate; Sunni Arabs are estimated at 20 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million. But misgivings about the Sunni voice in the new cabinet were compounded this week, when the National Assembly appointed a 55-member committee to draft the constitution. The panel has a 28-member majority from the Shiite alliance, and only two Sunni Arabs - both from parties that have shown little sign of drawing broad support in the Sunni Arab population. American officials say that while some Sunni groups will never lay down their arms, others have begun to recognize that their refusal to participate in the political process was a mistake. Meanwhile, the United States, battling a seemingly intractable insurgency, has begun to forcefully press for a political solution. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference this week that the goal of the intensified insurgent attacks was to discredit the new government. Senior American officers in Iraq and others in the Pentagon said the latest violence, which has killed nearly 500 people so far this month, had not prompted them to change their strategy of capturing or killing insurgents, cutting off their financing, pre-empting their attacks and training more Iraqi forces. Rather, they said, the attacks reinforced their view that quelling the insurgency would also require an effective political strategy to stabilize areas where insurgents have been most active, including Baghdad and Mosul, two of Iraq's biggest cities. To that end, American officials said, the United States is urging Dr. Jaafari, the new Iraqi leader, to renew talks with a coalition of Sunni Arab groups known as the National Dialogue Council, which has links to elements in the insurgency who it says are ready to explore openings toward a political settlement. But that approach also is fraught with difficulties, partly because of doubts that the council has the influence with the insurgents that it claims, and partly because the council's leaders have been deeply angered by raids by Iraqi forces on its Baghdad offices in the past 10 days. The raids resulted in the arrests of more than a dozen people, including some who had played a role in earlier contacts with the Shiite leaders. The attitude of insurgent leaders is another unknown, not least because American officials, two years into the war, acknowledge that they have little understanding of who the leaders are, apart from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant and operative of Al Qaeda who has claimed responsibility for many of the insurgents' suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. In reaching out to Sunni Arab intermediaries in the past year, the American goal has been to isolate Islamic terrorists, and die-hard groups intent on restoring a semblance of the Sunni despotism of Mr. Hussein, at least some of whom are believed to have rallied around Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a vice president under Mr. Hussein and one of the few major leaders of that era still at large. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who was an adviser to the American occupation last year, said in an interview that those who might be willing to negotiate include some leading Sunni religious figures, as well as tribal Sunni tribal leaders and former officials in Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party who aspire to "reconstruct a kind of neo-Baath Party purged of Saddam's influence." "Many of these elements have been signaling for a long time that they're ready to participate if they can be given a clear place in the system," Mr. Diamond said. By boycotting the election, he added, "they shot themselves in the foot, but they're still knocking on the door." The aim of talks with the National Dialogue Council, the Americans said, would be to draw Sunni Arab leaders with credibility in their own community into the new governing structure. But the American suggestions that the Jaafari government step up its outreach to Sunni Arabs have met a prickly response. Laith Kubba, a senior aide to Dr. Jaafari, said in a telephone interview in Baghdad on Saturday that the new government's policies would not be driven by Americans. "This is not the business of the U.S.," said Mr. Kubba, who spent years of exile in the United States during the Hussein years. "They can express concerns, they can give their views when asked, but this is a process managed by Iraqis and the prime minister is on top of it. He has led the efforts to build a dialogue with the Sunnis." Still, Mr. Kubba hinted at something that has worried American officials who have maintained close contact with the new government: the potential spoiler's role adopted by senior figures in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri, a religious party that is the dominant partner, with Mr. Jaafari's party, Dawa, in the new administration. Many Iraqis say Sciri's leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who holds no government post, may yet prove the decisive voice on crucial policy issues - like Sunni involvement. Mr. Kubba described the Hakim group as "a mixed bag," but acknowledged that some had what he described as "a partisan mentality." Mr. Kubba said there would be efforts to draw more Sunnis into the writing of the constitution. But he stressed that that how that would happen was a matter for the 275-member National Assembly, not for the Jaafari government alone. With only 17 Sunni Arabs in the assembly, one idea under discussion is appointing consultative groups that would not have to be drawn from assembly members. The prime minister, he said, "wants a much broader participation than a small circle of deputies talking among themselves." A further point, Mr. Kubba said, was that the interim constitution laid down last year set procedures for adoption of a new constitution that establish a veto if a two-thirds majority of voters in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it. Sunni Arabs, with heavy majorities in Salahuddin and Nineveh Provinces north of Baghdad and Anbar Province to the west, would thus have the potential to doom any constitution they disapprove of in the referendum that the interim constitution requires by Oct. 15, Mr. Kubba said. For American officials in Baghdad, the issue of the future power balance between the Shiite and Sunni communities is a powder keg. For nearly a year, Iraq has had a sovereign government, and, after the January elections, one with a popular mandate. American officials insist that they can recommend, but not command, steps that they believe will open the way to negotiations with the insurgents. "The Iraqis are going to have to figure this out for themselves," said an American official in Baghdad. "But what I'm seeing is a new willingness of people who used to be rejectionist to join the process and a new willingness by the government to talk to them that I did not see last year." But the Americans say that it is far from clear how much influence groups like the National Dialogue Council, composed of 31 Sunni groups, have on insurgent leaders - and uncertain, too, whether even the council's leaders believe in the kind of majority-rule democracy that the United States wants as its legacy in Iraq. The council's secretary general, Fakhri al-Qaisi, a Baghdad dentist with a long history of involvement in conservative Islamic groups, contests even the demographics that suggest that any majority-rule government in Iraq will have to be led by Shiites. He argues that Shiites, generally considered to be about 60 percent of the population, are actually about half that, and Sunni Arabs closer to 40 percent than 20 percent, as most Iraqi studies have suggested. After a raid on the council's offices this week, he said that the council was genuine in its desire to participate in the political process, but that its commitment had been shaken. "I think it's a scheme to wipe us out, destroy us," he said. "Their slogans about democracy are all lies." In an interview at the council's offices, which were strewn with upended furniture and emptied filing cabinets, Mr. Qaisi was contemptuous of the Sunni Arabs appointed to seats in the Jaafari cabinet after nominees put forward by the council were rejected. He described Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a former official in Mr. Hussein's government who resigned his post and fled the country, and who was named this week by Dr. Jaafari as defense minister, as a "double agent." Of the top Sunni in the government, the vice president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, he added, "He hasn't protected his friends or cooperated sincerely with us in the council." Saleh Mutlak, a council member who was involved in negotiations for the cabinet posts, said in an interview that the new government would have to be "realistic" and accept that not all of the insurgents were "criminals." He said that leaders of the military wing of Sciri, the Shiite religious party led by Mr. Hakim, appeared to have been the biggest obstacle to progress in negotiations with the new government, and that Dr. Jaafari had appeared halfhearted. "We could not reach anything with him," he said. "He speaks in a vague way. He never comes to the point." |
| Posted by:Ebbiper Speresing3684 |
| #4 More carrots in moderation are fine as long as its clear the alternative is a bigger stick. I understand the Kurds are itching to clean out Mosul and other northern Sunni strongholds and the Americans are holding them back becuase they don't want ethnic cleansing headlines (amoungst other reasons). |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-15 18:02 |
| #3 "We Waaaannnnna be in charge againnnnnn!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-15 13:58 |
| #2 They have proportional representation, but that isn't enough. They want consideration and respect. And to be in charge of everybody else. Sounds fair to me. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-05-15 13:39 |
| #1 The Sunnis sat out the election, have whined about it ever since, have been carrying out or are involved in the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks, and are getting their asses handed to them by America's Finest. I trust there will be a peace deal - when every last one of them is titzup with a toe tag. Game over, man, game over. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-05-15 12:57 |