Iraq at the mercy of 'kingmaker'
Muqtada By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - A short while ago, I met an
Iraqi friend in Europe and greeted him with the
traditional question in Arabic: "Kifak?"
("How are you?") With a weary smile he replied,
"To tell you the truth, I don't really know
anymore." I was taken by surprise at his response
because in the Arab world, one does not really
expect an answer to kifak?, which is a
simple greeting that parallels "good day" in
Western culture. He went on to say, "I do not
think any Iraqi has an answer to this question
today."
The reasons, he explained, were
that everybody around him in Iraq was complaining,
"There is no electricity, no security, no jobs, no
clean drinking water, no state, no government, no
services."
While remembering his words, I
read an editorial in Thursday's
edition of the London-based
Al-Hayat newspaper, by veteran journalist Ghassan
Charbil. He wrote, "The equation is normal and
simple: the Iraqi police [have] found a new task.
Every morning, their patrols collect the bodies
[of Iraqis] that were killed the previous night.
The scene becomes traditional: the bodies have
their hands tied and their eyes masked. There is
one bullet in their head. Sometimes it occurs to
the killer to decorate the corpse with some
deformations and signs of torture."
The
"killers" Charbil was talking about are the death
squads of Iraq. The bodies are those of Sunnis and
Shi'ites being butchered by sectarian violence.
These words hit like a bombshell in the Arab
world, especially when published in the region's
No 1 newspaper that is read by millions. No wonder
the new Iraq - the "democratic" Iraq - brings
nothing but shivers to the Arab people.
"The new Iraq" is a bad brand name in Arab
culture. There is no longer any need for Arab
regimes to point to the shortcomings of the new
Iraq - they shine like gold and are publicized
daily in mass media such as Al-Hayat and the
Doha-based television channel Al-Jazeera.
Charbil, a star in Arab journalism, added
that he contacted the Baghdad morgue and found out
that 35-50 bodies are received a day, many of
which were murdered by the death squads that roam
Iraqi streets by night, and which are allowed to
kill by the Ministry of Interior. The morgue, he
points out, is equipped to deal with no more than
10 bodies a day.
This ministry has been
run by the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI). Its minister, Bayan
Jabr, used his job to settle old scores with the
Sunni community, punishing them collectively
because Saddam Hussein had been a Sunni. Jabr's
police force, according to Iraqi Sunnis, turned a
blind eye to the murders in the streets, and some
Sunnis were arrested, then dragged to the
ministry, where they were tortured and in some
cases killed.
Other Sunnis claim that the
death squads are composed of the SCIRI's Badr
Brigade and the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Both were permitted, the Sunnis claim, to fire at
will after a terrorist bombing destroyed a holy
Shi'ite shrine in February. The attack was blamed
on Sunnis, and Shi'ites responded by destroying
their places of worship and killing many prominent
community leaders.
Amid all this tension,
Iraqi deputies met at parliament as scheduled on
Wednesday. It was a low turnout, with only 125 of
the 275 showing up. Again as expected, their
meeting was adjourned after they failed to reach a
solution on any pending issues. Prime on the
agenda was the creation of a new cabinet, and
amending the constitution, which was approved by
Iraqi deputies last October. Then, to meet a
preset deadline, Iraqi lawmakers agreed on the
constitutional draft, despite heavy objections
from Sunnis.
The constitution grants
limited autonomy to various regions, along with
control of the region's resources, which puts the
Shi'ites and the Kurds in control of the country's
massive oil wealth and leaves the Sunnis, who are
in central Iraq, with nothing. In October, the
constitution had been received with mixed emotions
among Iraq's different communities. In the Kurdish
district of Dahuk, for example, it passed with an
approval of 99.13%. In the Shi'ite Maysan district
it got a high 97.79%, while in the Sunni Anbar
province it was rejected by 96.95%.
These
divisions, apparently, are still as strong and
resulted in adjourning the parliamentary session
on Wednesday. The deputies decided to set up a
committee, according to Article 142 of the
constitution, to hear out all options for
amendments within the next four months. As the
meeting adjourned, Iraq was making headlines with
the scores killed by a suicide bombing in Fallujah
on Wednesday. Of the murdered men, 18 were young
cadets from the police.
Other pending
issues are that of the government. It has been
decided that the cabinet of Prime
Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki will distribute
32 posts according to sectarian lines, giving 14
portfolios to the Shi'ites of the dominant United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA), eight to the Kurds, seven to
the Sunnis and three to the seculars, lead by
former prime minister Iyad Allawi. This division
has greatly angered the seculars, who claim this
is creating more friction in Iraq, and the Sunnis,
who argue that they are under-represented with
seven seats.
Izzat al-Shabandar, a
pro-Allawi member of parliament, said this
composition established "the basis for an ethnic
and sectarian system that will lead Iraq to hell".
Naturally, this make-up was supported by the
rebel-turned-politician Muqtada. He controls 35 of
the 275 seats in parliament, and is still a name
to be reckoned with in Iraq. He is, along with the
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the "kingmaker" of
Iraqi politics. Although he agreed to drop his
candidate, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, for the job of
prime minister last month, Muqtada still has many
demands that he expects Jaafari's successor Maliki
to meet.
Muqtada has laid claim to the
ministries of Education, Youth, Commerce,
Agriculture and Electricity. Each claim comes with
obvious reasons. Muqtada wants Education so he can
impose an Islamic education on Iraq that
indoctrinates Iraqis on jihad, anti-Western views
and anti-Americanism. He needs the portfolio of
Youth to complement his hold on Education, so he
can control sports, scouts and other youth
movements while spreading his radical views among
young adults so they can join his political force
or his Mehdi Army.
The Ministry of
Commerce would be a source of revenue for Muqtada
and his allies, while Electricity - a service post
- means holding the strings to basic necessities
of Iraqi life. By controlling youth, scouts,
education and charity, Muqtada would be repeating
what Hezbollah did in Lebanon, where it entrenched
and endeared itself within the Shi'ite community
by providing services, jobs and money to its
supporters - thereby enabling it to recruit
thousands in the 1990s.
If Muqtada can
provide electricity for the Iraqis, this would be
a plus to his record since most of them have lived
in darkness since the downfall of Saddam's regime
in 2003. Already, Muqtada controls the ministries
of Health and Transportation, and nothing in
Baghdad shows that he is willing to give up either
portfolio.
If Muqtada gets his way, he
will be in control of seven out of 32 posts in the
Maliki government. His record at Health has been a
bad one, and doctors complain of a lack of proper
hospitals, shortage of equipment, low pay and a
huge shortage in human resources. At
Transportation, Muqtada's men have plastered
pictures of Shi'ite clerics at train stations, bus
stations and Baghdad airport, while they have
prohibited the sale of alcohol at the duty-free
shop there.
Other problems include the
critical portfolios of Defense and Interior. It
has been proposed that Defense be given to a Sunni
while Interior is given to the UIA. Again, giving
the job to the Shi'ites settles none of the
disputes because the Sunnis, Kurds and Americans
have been demanding that the job be given to a
non-sectarian official, to avoid repeating the
atrocities committed by the SCIRI minister Bayan
Jabr under Jaafari. Muqtada supports sidelining
the SCIRI from Interior - preferring instead to
see one of his own men as minister, something of
course that is universally rejected in Baghdad.
When the world welcomed Maliki as prime
minister it failed to see what kind of
relationship he had with Muqtada. The young cleric
has always been an ally of Maliki and Jaafari's
al-Da'wa Party. Maliki, Jaafari and Muqtada are
all members of the UIA. All of them have
pan-Shi'ite loyalties and all have a record of
having worked against the Sunnis since the
downfall of Saddam's regime.
Muqtada is
accused of engineering death squads while Maliki
was head of the de-Ba'athification committees that
purged all former Ba'athists (most were Sunnis)
from government and the civil service. Maliki had
refused to differentiate between those who had
joined the party out of simple need for
professional development and those who were loyal
to Saddam. To him, all of them were enemies who
had to be punished.
With such a record,
Maliki has much in common with Muqtada. It was
Muqtada who helped Jaafari (a split image of
Maliki) win the internal UIA vote in February. He
wanted Jaafari and Da'wa to counterbalance the
influence of the SCIRI and his traditional
opponent in Shi'ite politics, Abdu Aziz al-Hakim.
Muqtada and Maliki also share a similar vision -
as was the case with Jaafari - in not wanting to
see a divided Iraq with a Shi'ite region in the
south.
At heart, they say - and we have no
reason not to believe them - that they are Arab
nationalists who believe in Iraq's Arabism. Their
only condition is that it be a Shi'ite-dominated
Iraq. Both dream of a theocracy modeled after
Iran, but independent of Iran. Although Maliki has
said he will disarm militias, Muqtada insists that
his Mehdi Army is not a militia, and is currently
negotiating its future with the prime minister. It
is very probable that Maliki will find a way for
Muqtada to maintain his Mehdi Army, referring to
it as a social organization, for example, rather
than an armed militia.
With so much in
common - and so few (if any) differences - what
can one expect from Maliki in light of Muqtada's
ministerial demands?
If Maliki says no to
Muqtada, the rebel-cleric can and will work to
eject him from office. He has the cards inside the
UIA, and also controls the minds and hearts of
millions of Iraqi youth. He is also very
influential in the slums of Baghdad, among the
urban poor, and within the working middle-class
Shi'ite community. All combined, their opposition
can bring down Maliki.
And if Maliki says
"yes" to Muqtada, this will bring him back to the
same position that crippled his predecessor,
Jaafari. A Maliki manipulated by Muqtada is a
Maliki nobody in Iraq wants to deal with - neither
the Americans, the Sunnis, the seculars or the
Kurds.
A cabinet with seven of Muqtada's
men in it is also a cabinet that nobody would want
to join - certainly not the Sunnis, and certainly
not Allawi, who had tried to eradicate Muqtada's
movement when he was prime minister in 2004.
If Maliki lets Muqtada have his way, all
of these players will refuse to cooperate in
creating a government and Maliki will have to step
down. With and without Muqtada, his job is
impossible.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst. He is the author of
Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped
Syria 1900-2000 (Cune Press 2005).
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