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It's (political) party
time
BAGHDAD - Only three weeks
since Saddam Hussein was removed from power, and more
than 40 political parties and groups have emerged in
Iraq.
Among the new arrivals, the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), co-founded by Ahmad Chalabi as an
umbrella organization for opposition groups in exile,
has already made a strong showing. The INC occupies an
impressive building of the Iraqi Hunting Club in
Baghdad's prestigious Mansur neighborhood, once favored
by top members of the former regime. Now, hundreds of
the INC's camouflaged men, called the Free Iraqi Forces,
stand at checkpoints around Baghdad.
Zaab
Sethna, a Pakistani-born spokesman and a senior advisor
to Chalabi, says the INC has more than 2,000 militiamen
and new members number in the thousands. "You have two
requirements to be a member of INC," Sethna said. "You
have to be opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime and
[you] have to be in favor of democracy."
Life in
the hunting-club compound these days is busy, with some
INC members interviewing applicants to join their
movement and their militia. The building is heavily
guarded - uniformed men make thorough searches of
everyone coming in.
At the entrance, adorned by
smiling pictures of Chalabi, two dozen men waited to
fill in applications to join the INC. They believed that
Chalabi has the support of the US government and they
wanted to join the INC at the start to ensure getting a
good job.
But some potential members were also
hesitant about the movement and its intentions. Hashim,
a photographer who had been trying to get an INC job
without success for three days, said that so far the INC
has been choosing only males with strong bodies. He said
it was not differentiating between honest people and
thieves. "Since I have been coming to this party to ask
them [for] a job, it seems to me that they are making
false promises."
There are five more offices of
the INC in Baghdad and all of them occupy impressive
buildings and mansions left by members of the former
regime. One of the INC's neighbors is the headquarters
of a well-known Shi'ite group, the Society of Honorable
Scholars of Najaf. While the INC office was crowded with
job-seekers, there was quiet next door. Several men were
sitting inside the dusty and unfurnished mansion. They
said they occupied this and another villa in Baghdad
without coordinating with the US military, which is
distributing buildings to new parties now.
Sheik
Abd-Jabbur Manhell, the head of the Baghdad office, sat
behind the only piece of furniture in the entrance hall
- an empty desk. He was surrounded by portraits of Imam
Ali, Imam Hussein and several other respected religious
leaders.
He said, "We won't rush to declare a
jihad against Americans; we'll wait and see if the US
sincerely wants a free and democratic Iraq. If it's up
to the Iraqi people to choose their own government, I'm
sure that up to 70 percent of the Iraqi population will
want an Islamic state."
As he spoke, several
dozen young men in a bus and several cars approached the
office to coordinate a demonstration the next day in the
city center. Abd-Jabbur pointed to the demonstration as
proof of his statement.
But Dr Hashim
al-Hassani, one of the leading members of another
grouping, the Islamic Party of Iraq, denies such a
claim. The party occupies a hall of a half-destroyed
building of the secret police. He believes that what
Iraqis are looking for is democracy and freedom.
"What is an Islamic state going to do? You know,
we are looking to establish certain goals and whoever
establishes that goal for us, we don't care. We want
freedom, we want Iraq to prosper, we want Iraqi
resources distributed evenly among its people. We want a
united Iraq."
There was a kind of solitude at the
headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
one of two leading Iraqi Kurdish parties. Eight
uniformed Peshmergas (Kurdish fighters) stood
guard in front of the former Ba'ath Party building.
Inside the looted building, some PUK members were
working on a green-and-white billboard that said
"Patriotic Union of Kurdistan work for a united,
democratic ... " The last word was missing.
The
head of the party's Baghdad office, Adel Murad, said the
missing word was "Iraq". He said the PUK is optimistic
about the future of Iraq and a governing structure that
favors autonomy in the north, where the Kurds mostly
live.
"Now we [Kurdish groups] are strong
because our area was liberated 12 years ago and we
organized ourselves. So we came to Baghdad to do good
things to our people, not alone but with Arabs and
Shi'ites, to rebuild the country."
While the
groups represent very different constituencies and
interests, all say that rebuilding Iraq is their major
priority. And although they all say the Iraqi people
must choose the new government, there is also a certain
amount of shared anxiety that the United States - and
not the Iraqi people - will still have the last word.
(©2003 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission
of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20036.)
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