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2 Dog eats dog in fractured
Iraq By Sami Moubayed
Agency (CIA) director Michael Hayden
admitted that only 1,300 members of the insurgency
are actually members of al-Qaeda. This means that
of the 40,000-strong insurgency, only 3.25% are
from al-Qaeda. The Sunni tribes operating in the
insurgency are, in Hayden's words, "in the low
tens of thousands". This implies that the
remainder of the armed groups are Shi'ite.
Is it entirely surprising, then, that none
other than Muqtada came out with an unusual offer.
Speaking to his followers, he called for
rapprochement between
political and religious forces, saying: "Let us
shake hands, and I want nothing from you. Is it
not enough that in our division and arguments
there is a service to the enemy?"
Speaking
on the seventh anniversary of his father's
martyrdom, Muqtada said: "If the late Sadr had
been among you, he would have said, 'Preserve your
unity. Don't carry out any act before you ask the
hawza [Shi'ite seminary in Najaf]. Be the
ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who
treat others unjustly.'" Members of Muqtada's
movement had threatened to resign from the cabinet
if Maliki agreed to meet with President George W
Bush in Amman on Wednesday.
For the first
time since his name began to shine, Muqtada's
"wise" words fell on deaf ears. Over the past
week, in response to the massive sectarian attacks
on the Shi'ite enclave, Sadr City, in Baghdad -
and despite Muqtada's calls for calm - armed
Shi'ite groups stormed the offices of the AMS and
the Sunni shrine Abu Hanifa, damaging them
extensively. One group invaded the Huriyya
district of Baghdad, burning four Sunni mosques,
killing 30 people and wounding 48. Six of those
killed were burned alive with gasoline as they
left the mosque on Friday.
The UN declared
that 3,709 people were killed last month - the
highest death toll since the US invasion took
place 44 months ago.
In the Sunni
stronghold al-Anbar province, gun battles have
taken place between former Ba'athists belonging to
al-Awda Party and Sunni militias loyal to
al-Qaeda. Prominent cleric Abdul-Sattar Abu Risheh
has called on the Sunnis of Anbar to resist
al-Qaeda. This spells out an increasing Sunni
divide. The former Ba'athists have been so
successful, and recently created a secular
paramilitary Sunni party called al-Awda (The
Return), that al-Qaeda guerrillas are forced to
divert some of their attention from fighting the
Americans and members of the post-Saddam order to
fighting the Ba'athists.
Al-Qaeda has gone
so far as to drop flyers in Anbar saying that any
member of al-Awda will be shot. The flyer read:
"The Ba'ath secular party will find no quarter in
the new principality of the Islamic state of
Iraq." Former generals in Saddam's regime have
since been murdered in Anbar. A tribal council in
Anbar said last weekend that Sunni tribesmen had
killed 55 members of al-Qaeda.
All of this
boils down to one fact: Maliki's security plan of
which he boasted when coming to power in May has
proved an utter failure. Not only has he
disappointed Sunnis but even the Shi'ites - after
the latest bombings in Sadr City - have lost faith
in him. This was made clear when he visited the
slum there to pay respect to the hundreds of
victims who were killed last week. Rather than be
welcomed in his own constituency, Maliki was
received with stones and angry Shi'ites.
These divisions in the Shi'ite front
challenge the CIA director's claim, which says the
Sunnis are not as powerful as they seem to be in
the insurgency. If the Sunnis are not in control,
and apparently nor are the Shi'ites, then who is?
The answer is: nobody! The Sunni insurgency is
clear divided, more so after the killing of
al-Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the summer. It
is now becoming Ba'athists, or secularists and
tribesmen, versus al-Qaeda.
The Shi'ite
street is also divided, with one group clearly
emerging around Maliki and Muqtada, and the other
loyal to Iran and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and his
SCIRI. The US is caught in the middle of this
labyrinth, and clearly has no clue on how to get
out. The now-dominant Democrats in the US Congress
are expected in January to demand some sort of
troop withdrawal, starting mid-2007. But until
then, chaos is becoming stronger by the minute in
Iraq.
This might explain why the Americans
have explored, over the past few weeks, several
options to stabilize the country. One option is to
talk to Iran to control the Shi'ite insurgency.
The other is to talk to Syria to control the Sunni
insurgency. The third option - too difficult for
the Bush administration - is to talk to both.
Talking to Iran, in any way, is too
difficult for the Americans, and if they were to
acknowledge the need to deal with Tehran, it would
have to be through the Syrians. The US approved
the sending of a senior British envoy to Damascus
last month to meet with President Bashar al-Assad
and demand - among other things - Syrian support
for the Maliki government.
Syria responded
promptly by sending Foreign Minister Walid
al-Moualim to Baghdad, which agreed to
re-establish diplomatic relations with Syria. This
gives great credibility to Maliki's cabinet in the
eyes of Iraqi Sunnis. Syria is also preparing to
receive a senior Iraqi security delegation, which
includes Interior Minister Boulani, to discuss
bilateral relations - an act that surely is
pleasing to the Americans.
But bringing
the Sunnis to order in Iraq will not be easy
without the support of Saudi Arabia. And Syria's
relations with Riyadh are currently tense because
of the situation in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia's
support for Syria's opponents in Beirut, including
parliamentarian Saad al-Hariri and Prime Minister
Fouad al-Siniora.
As long as there is no
Syrian-Saudi rapprochement, the Sunni street of
Iraq will remain divided, because Saudi Arabia has
control over Iraqi Sunnis, and uses it extensively
to counterbalance the meddling of Iran in Iraqi
affairs. And Iran's influence on the Shi'ite
street is paramount. If the US wants to pacify the
Shi'ite street, it must talk to Tehran. Unless
this happens, the situation will remain as chaotic
as it has become since February.
The motto
will remain: "We killed Nuri al-Said. What in the
world makes you think that we cannot kill you as
well?"
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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