Opening shots fired in battle for
Baghdad By Sumedha Senanayake
On January 6, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki announced a new plan to bring security
to Baghdad and wrest control of the capital from
the armed groups blamed for much of the sectarian
violence. Although details remain sketchy, the
plan has been attacked as being risky and likely
to exacerbate sectarian tensions.
In a
speech marking the 86th anniversary of the
formation of the Iraqi Army, Maliki said the new
plan centered on the deployment of additional
Iraqi forces, including Kurdish fighters, into
Baghdad, to be supported by US-led coalition
troops. These forces would
then
conduct neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweeps to rid
Baghdad of extremist groups.
In addition,
Maliki said the plan "will deny all outlaws a safe
haven, irrespective of their sectarian or
political affiliation", suggesting that he may be
ready to crack down on Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army.
Sunni Arabs denounce plan Sunni
Arab leaders were quick to reject the plan,
describing it as "unconstitutional". Iraqi
Parliament speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani noted that
Maliki had never consulted with the Council of
Representatives over the plan, and therefore
deputies were not given an opportunity to vote on
it, al-Sharqiyah television reported.
The
Iraqi constitution does not allow the prime
minister to approve a security plan without
referring it to the Council of Representatives,
now that the Emergency Law - which gave him
extraordinary executive powers - has expired.
Consequently, "this plan has no legal legitimacy",
Mashhadani said.
Other Sunni politicians
criticized the plan because they said it focused
mostly in the western, Sunni part of Baghdad and
left out Shi'ite Sadr City in the east. Sunni
leaders warned that this perceived lack of
fairness would worsen sectarian tensions.
Salih al-Mutlaq, the head of the Front for
National Dialogue, went so far as to describe the
plan as the Shi'ite-led government's latest effort
to cleanse Baghdad of Sunni Arabs, Al-Jazeera
satellite television reported.
"The new
plan will fail in the same manner as the previous
security plans failed, but this time it seems that
there are attempts to purge the city of Baghdad of
certain segments of Iraqi society and thus deepen
the sectarian rift in Iraq," Mutlaq said.
Controversial Kurdish participation There have been conflicting reports as to
whether several battalions of the Kurdish militia,
the Peshmerga, will be sent to participate in the
Baghdad security operation. An official in the
Kurdish regional government, on condition of
anonymity, told The New Anatolian on January 9
that Kurdish forces would only be deployed under a
certain set of conditions.
"We will not
deploy any Peshmerga forces in Baghdad. The
Peshmerga forces are a special force that will
only be used to protect the Kurdish region," the
official said. "However, we may send troops as
part of the Iraqi Army to be deployed in Baghdad
only if the Iraqi Parliament officially makes such
a request and our Kurdish regional parliament
approves it."
The issue of sending Kurdish
forces into Baghdad is controversial. Since the
fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, Kurdish forces
have never been deployed in Baghdad and several
Kurdish officials have indicated that this move
would be dangerous and risk inflaming ethnic
divisions.
It could also draw the Kurds
into the sectarian conflict that has been almost
exclusively between the Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs.
Kurdish leaders have voiced concern over the
perception that Iraqi Kurds, a majority of whom
are Sunnis, would be fighting against their Sunni
Arab brothers.
Mahmud Uthman, a prominent
leader in the Iraqi Kurdish Coalition, has come
out against sending Kurdish forces to fight Arabs
anywhere in Iraq, al-Zaman reported on January 8.
"There are fears that a fight like this, pitting
Kurds against the Arabs, is bound to add an ethnic
touch to the conflict," he said. "The deployment
of Kurdish forces in Arab areas is wrong and will
create sensitivities and accusations that the
Kurds are killing the Arabs."
Maliki's
high stakes Maliki's initiative, despite
its seemingly noble intentions, carries great
risks. The plan for Iraqi forces to move from
district to district to drive out insurgents and
militia elements will almost certainly result in
considerable casualties. If the operation is
perceived to be excessively heavy-handed, then
Maliki could face a severe backlash, not only from
the Sunni Arab population, but from his own
Shi'ite coalition as well.
A prolonged and
bloody confrontation with Muqtada's Mehdi Army
could also prove disastrous for Maliki's
leadership. Maliki's political position has been
tenuous for months, and he has been under
tremendous pressure to reign in Muqtada's militia,
which is widely blamed for being one of the main
instigators of sectarian attacks. If the Baghdad
security operation goes poorly and casualties
mount, it may signal the end of Maliki's tenure as
prime minister.
In addition, if it appears
that Muqtada's militia is being crushed by Iraqi
forces backed by US firepower, it may force Iraq's
Shi'ite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, to intervene and call for an end to
the operation, which would be highly embarrassing
for Maliki. Indeed, the last time Iraqi and US
forces confronted Muqtada's militia, in the holy
city of Najaf in August 2004, it only ended when
Sistani brokered a truce.
While sectarian
tensions have been running high since the attack
on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra last February,
the situation has been particularly tense since
the execution of Saddam Hussein on December 30.
The release of the unauthorized video of the
execution incensed Sunni Arabs with what they saw
as the exceptionally undignified manner in which
the government carried out the hanging.
If
Sunnis sense that their neighborhoods are being
disproportionately targeted in the security
operation, this will only exacerbate their
distrust of the government. The armed Sunni groups
thought to make up most of the insurgency would
also be that much less inclined to disarm and
enter the political process.
For this
reason, US Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno
urged a balanced approach to the operation, which
should target both Shi'ite militias and Sunni
extremists, The Washington Post reported on
January 7. Otherwise, Maliki's gamble on security
in Baghdad may prove to be his last at the head of
the Iraqi government.
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2006, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
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