Plan B and four nightmares in
Iraq By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Iraq is boiling with political
activity as all parties jockey to decide on who
the new prime minister will be after the
parliamentary elections of last December. Talks
will go into full gear when Maasoud al-Barazani,
the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, arrives in
Baghdad next week to take part in the
negotiations. Barazani speaks for the Kurds, who
secured 53 of the 275 seats in the new National
Assembly, down from their original 75 in the
parliament of 2005.
The Kurds, headed by
Barazani and President Jalal Talabani, are upset
that their number has been reduced, and that they
have to
share power with both the
Sunnis and the Iran-backed Shi'ites of Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim and the Supreme Council of the Iraqi
Revolution (SCIRI).
The heavyweight in
Iraqi politics, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) of
Iran-backed Shi'ite politicians (which includes
the SCIRI), will have the strongest say in
deciding who the prime minister will be, since it
came out with a near-majority, winning 127 of the
seats in the assembly. This means it is 56 seats
short of the two-thirds majority needed to form a
government on its own - and elect the premier of
its choice.
At present, there are four
candidates for the job of prime minister: current
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the Da'wa
Party, current Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi
from the SCIRI, Nadim al-Jabiri of the al-Fadila
al-Islamiyya Party and Hussein Shahristani of the
UIA.
All of them are the product of
Islamic parties. All of them are frowned on by
Washington. The last thing the Americans wanted to
install in Iraq, after toppling Saddam Hussein in
2003, was a group of men who believe in political
Islam and are backed by the clerics of Tehran.
This fear is shared by regional states such as
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Syria.
If
it had its way, the US would have chosen
ex-premier Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, to lead
the new Iraq. He is strong, is well connected in
the Arab world, is allied to the Sunnis, and does
not have an Islamic agenda. He is the only man who
is willing and able to stand up to Iranian
meddling in Iraqi affairs, which if anything is
likely to increase under President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad.
The four current candidates
are all allied to Tehran. All of them spent many
years in exile in Iran during Saddam's
dictatorship and want to repay the Islamic
Republic's support by strengthening ties with the
mullahs.
Four US nightmares
Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The current
premier is the strongest of all the candidates,
despite all media talk from opponents who blame
him for the appalling security situation and the
corruption prevailing in Iraq. Born in 1947,
Jaafari became prime minister after the elections
of January 2005. He had been one of the two vice
presidents of ex-president Ghazi al-Yawer in the
interim government of 2004. He is also leader of
the Da'wa Party, one of the main Islamic political
parties operating in Iraq under Iranian funds
since the 1960s.
Jaafari was educated as a
medical doctor at the University of Mosul. He
joined the Da'wa Party in 1966 and was active in
party politics until the Ba'athist regime came to
power in 1968 and outlawed all political parties.
The Ba'ath was particularly harsh with the Da'wa
Party, accusing it of being on the Iranian payroll
and of wanting to topple the regime. Jaafari fled
to Iran after the Islamic revolution took place in
1979, where he was received with honors by
ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then went to London
in 1989, becoming spokesman for his party there.
During his stay in Tehran, he helped Hakim
found SCIRI. Saddam responded by executing five
members of Jaafari's family still living in Iraq.
Jaafari worked part-time as a religious preacher,
especially during the month of Ramadan, where he
gave Islamic advice free of charge to the Iraqi
community in Britain. Jaafari returned to Iraq
after the downfall of Saddam and served as first
chairman of the Interim Governing Council.
Jaafari brought his Da'wa Party into the
UIA and became prime minister on April 7, 2005.
Opinion polls conducted in Iraq since the US war
show that he is one of the most popular leaders in
Iraq, preceded by the rebel leader Muqtada al-Sadr
and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who happens to
be Jaafari's brother-in-law. It was Sistani's
support in 2005 that secured the premiership for
Jaafari. His party is also viewed with high regard
in Iraq, mainly because of its long history in
opposing the Ba'athists, but also because Sistani
has graced it with his blessing. Even today, Da'wa
is regarded as decent and uncorrupted.
Adel Abdul-Mehdi. He is a
heavyweight challenging Jaafari. Born in Baghdad
in 1948, he was persecuted for his Maoist views as
a young man, then arrested and tortured after the
Ba'athists came to power in 1968. He escaped to
France, where he abandoned Maoism, rediscovered
Islam, studied economics and political science,
then became chairman of the French Institute for
Islamic Studies.
The Ba'athists sentenced
him to death for his opposition activities and
stripped him of his Iraqi passport. Like many of
the Shi'ite politicians, he went to Iran after the
revolution of 1979 and helped Hakim found the
SCIRI. He, too, received orders and money from
Tehran, working closely with Iranian authorities
to topple Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War of
1980-88.
He returned to Iraq after the
downfall of Saddam in 2003 and become minister of
finance in the cabinet of Iyad Allawi in 2004. In
an interview with CNN's Late Edition in
2005, Abdul-Mehdi denied all talk about him
wanting to establish an Islamic regime in Iraq,
based on the Iranian theocracy. He said: "We don't
want either a Shi'ite government or an Islamic
government. Now we are working for a democratic
government. This is our choice." Not many people
believe him, either within the Sunni community of
Iraq or in the US.
Hussein
Shahristani. He is a compromise candidate
for all parties. Born in Karbala in 1942, he
studied nuclear chemistry and graduated with a PhD
from the University of Toronto in 1969. Married to
a Canadian woman, he was a student activist with
Islamic views and headed the Iraqi Student Union
during his college years.
He returned to
Iraq and became a member of the Atomic Power
Committee in 1970. In 1971, he became a professor
at Mosul University, then Baghdad University,
angering regime authorities for refusing to join
the ruling Ba'ath Party. He became chief of the
Iraq Atomic Energy Commission but was arrested in
1980 for refusing to build a nuclear bomb for
Saddam, right before the Iraqi dictator's war on
Iran.
He was tortured heavily in jail but
managed to escape in 1991, during the chaos of the
Gulf War, and took up refuge in Iran. His heroism
for having said "no" to Saddam, suffered in jail
and exile, then worked for the dictator's downfall
all score him points within Shi'ite, Sunni and
Kurdish circles in Iraq. Unlike Jaafari, he is not
responsible for the failures of the past 12
months. He has announced his decision to work with
all parties and has shown no tendency toward
radicalization since 2003.
Nadim
al-Jabiri. He is another compromise
candidate from the al-Fadila al-Islamiyya Party,
which is allied and born out of the Sadr movement,
currently headed by Muqtada. Jabiri was born in
Baghdad in 1959, studied political science and
worked as a professor in Iraq for more than 20
years. He has voiced his opposition to sectarian
politics, claiming that all sides should unite in
the post-Saddam order. "Iraq nowadays is full of
sectarian tension, and our information says the
tension is increasing as the deliberations
regarding the formation of the government is going
on," he said to Doha-based Al-Jazeera, adding that
"it is very important that the coming prime
minister is acceptable to most Iraqi factions.
This will bridge the gaps and re-establish trust
among all parties."
Jabiri pointed out
that he would be willing to disengage himself from
his party and run as an independent if this would
please different parties and enable him to become
the new premier. If he is not nominated as a
member, Jabiri might withdraw from the alliance,
to mess things up for the remaining candidates and
hamper Iranian ambitions at bringing Jaafari or
Abdul-Mehdi to power.
Plan B The United States has realized, too little and
too late, that those to benefit most from the
Anglo-American war on Iraq were the Shi'ites of
Iran. The US administration has bluntly said it
would have to re-evaluate plan A, meaning its
military and financial assistance to Iraq, if an
Iran-backed government is created. It would stop,
or curb, its massive effort to equip and train the
Iraqi army and police.
It has already
angered the Shi'ites by giving clear support to
the Sunnis, whom it encouraged to run in the
elections and who came out, in total, with 59
seats, thereby breaking the clear-cut Shi'ite
majority obtained in January 2005.
The
election results mean that the Iran-backed
Shi'ites cannot form a government on their own.
They will have to ally themselves with the Kurds,
who are mostly secular, and the Sunnis, who
although numerically inferior to the Shi'ites are
nevertheless the traditional rulers of Iraq and
have the power to stop the Sunni insurgency.
This insurgency has already started
showing signs of division as Sunni clerics
criticize the terrorism of the al-Qaeda branch in
Iraq and its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Some
want to lay down arms and join the political
process, while a few want to continue their
military activities.
The Americans believe
that once the Sunnis become decision-makers in
Iraq, they will shoulder blame for economic,
political and security affairs with the Shi'ites.
They will use all their influence to end the Sunni
insurgency, and then try to get rid of the
Americans through "honorable cooperation" rather
than armed resistance.
Naseer al-Any, a
member of the Iraqi Islamic Party (a Sunni one),
said to the Christian Science Monitor, "We are
convinced that we are in a powerful position now.
There is a change in the way the Americans deal
with us."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US
ambassador to Iraq, told Newsweek that talks had
already started between the US and the Sunni
insurgency at a military base in Anbar province.
He said, "Now we have won over the Sunni political
leadership. The next step is to win over the
insurgents."
This peace between Washington
and the Sunnis is a clear signal to the Shi'ites
that they are no longer the White House favorites
in Iraq. Reda Taki of the SCIRI told the Christian
Science Monitor, "I am prepared to go down into
the streets and take up arms and fight to prevent
the Ba'athist dictators and terrorists [in
reference to the Sunnis] from coming back to
power."
Khalilzad came close to saying
that the United States had abandoned the Shi'ites
in an interview with the Washington Post, when he
pointed out that any future US assistance to a
Shi'ite-led government was at stake if an
Iran-backed UIA leader became prime minister,
bringing much joy to the Iraqi Sunni community.
The ambassador said, "We are saying, if
you choose the wrong candidates, that will affect
US aid." He has conditioned that the "security"
ministries of Defense and Interior be given to
non-sectarian politicians, while the Iran-backed
Shi'ites are demanding them for themselves.
This was immediately backed by a Sunni
decision last Saturday to create a group to lobby
against giving the ministries to "sectarian
politicians". Khalilzad is apparently very close
to US President George W Bush. The president is
hearing alarming reports from his ambassador about
the rising threat of Iranian influence in Iraqi
politics and the absolute need to work with the
Sunnis.
Obviously, Bush realizes the risks
of such an offensive. The Shi'ites, after all,
were among America's primary allies in the
post-Saddam order. It was the support of Shi'ites
such as Sistani and Jaafari that made life in Iraq
a little bit more bearable for the Americans.
Bush needs the security of a plan B for
his army in Iraq. He clearly wants it to work with
the Sunnis, whom he mistakenly had tried to
sideline since 2003. The US has tried to court the
Sunnis for the past year and one of the reasons it
is demanding that the Interior Ministry be given
to independent politicians is that under Jaafari,
the ministry was controlled by a member of the
SCIRI.
Jaafari was involved in arresting
and torturing Sunni politicians, using the police
force to settle old scores with the Sunnis. All
this does is add fuel to the Sunni insurgency.
David Ignatius commented in the Washington Post,
"The American envoy is deploying a weapon the US
hasn't used much in Iraq - the word 'no'."
He added that if the Iraqis don't follow
the US agenda, Washington threatens "to walk
away". Turning its back on a country it destroyed
before repairing it would be a nightmare for the
Iraqis. This might be enough reason for Iraqis to
act wisely and listen to what the Americans are
saying. But the Americans must realize that
democracy, although it has its side-effects,
always produces situations that can be handled in
a civilized and sophisticated manner.
Walking away would ruin whatever Bush
wanted history to say about him in Iraq. On the
contrary, the Americans must say to themselves:
"The Iran-backed Shi'ites came to power. Fine. We
can deal with that. A democracy means that they
rule until 2010 and then, if they fail in office,
they will be ejected by the people." The Americans
have to believe in the democratic system they are
creating in Iraq. They have no other choice.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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