DAMASCUS - US Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates wrapped up a visit to Baghdad last week with
an ultimatum, calling on Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki to "extend a hand to the Sunnis". Only
that, he added, will "save the situation" in Iraq,
echoing what former US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad has been saying to the Iraqis for the
past 12 months.
Key to this initiative is
reversal of the controversial de-Ba'athification
campaign that many say is the root cause of most
of Iraq's problems. A US-inspired bill is now with
Parliament that
aims
significantly to reintegrate former Ba'athists
under Saddam Hussein, who are predominantly Sunni,
into society, the armed forces and government.
Khalilzad firmly believes that one of
America's gravest mistakes was ignoring the Sunnis
after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, and making the
Sunni community collectively pay the price for
Saddam's dictatorship. Not all Sunnis were members
of the Saddam regime, and certainly not all of
them benefited during his years in power.
The Americans forgot that all of their
traditional allies in the Arab world, ranging from
Egypt to Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf and Jordan,
were Sunni countries that would not stand by and
watch the Iraqi Sunni community being crushed by
Shi'ites and Kurds.
The Americans
mistakenly believed that Iraq's Shi'ites would
support them until curtain-fall, motivated by a
thundering hatred for Saddam and gratitude for
whoever would bring him to justice. They forgot
the Iran factor, and their alliances with the
Shi'ites snapped the minute they dominated Baghdad
after Saddam was ejected from power.
After
this ill-fated experiment with the Shi'ites, where
they showed their true loyalties by rallying
rank-and-file behind the Iranian regime, and took
control of Parliament in the elections of 2006,
the Americans turned back to the Sunnis. They
tried to bring them back into the political
process, seeing that the insurgency was mainly
Sunni, centered on former Ba'athists, tribesmen
and members of al-Qaeda.
If the Sunnis
were given power, reward and responsibility, the
Americans reasoned, then they would help shoulder
security in Baghdad. Only then would they work for
a stable Iraq and successful political process,
seeing it as an extension of their own success,
stability and continuity.
Once again, the
Americans were wrong. The Sunnis, seeing the
gesture as too little too late, did not
collectively endorse the political process, and on
the contrary remained overwhelmingly opposed to it
and its two consecutive prime ministers, Ibrahim
al-Jaafari and Maliki.
The Sunnis accused
the premiers of tolerating the Shi'ite militias
that were striking at the Sunni community and
funding - or turning a blind eye to - the death
squads that roam the streets of the capital,
looking for trouble among Iraqi Sunnis. Sectarian
violence reached dramatic new heights after a
terrorist attack hit a holy Shi'ite shrine in
Samarra in February 2006.
Shi'ites,
enraged, accused the Sunnis of foul play and
without a shred of evidence went about killing
community leaders, burning mosques and terrorizing
entire Sunni neighborhoods.
As far as
Gates is concerned, all of this has to stop before
the US re-establishes its confidence in Maliki.
Clearly, Maliki has to reach some
compromise with the Sunnis, otherwise his cabinet
will collapse. But he cannot do this easily as
these are the same Sunnis he has tried to uproot,
persecute and discourage from joining the
political process, in a bid to keep power in his
hands and those of Shi'ite leaders that support
him, such as Muqtada al-Sadr.
The
Americans have given him a June deadline to get
his act together - and extend a hand to the Sunnis
- or find another job. One of the immediate
outcomes of Gates' ultimatum was Maliki's
announcement that a new reconciliation conference
will be held soon in Switzerland to bring warring
Iraqi politicians together.
The pieces now
start falling into place. This explains why
Muqtada walked out on Maliki early this month,
withdrawing his six cabinet ministers from the
US-backed government. It was a move, engineered by
Maliki and Muqtada, to appease the Sunnis, and in
the process appease the Americans, with minimal,
cosmetic damage to Shi'ites.
At the same
time, though, Maliki initially went along with the
US military plan to build a 5-kilometer-long,
3.7-meter-high concrete wall to block off the
Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah in Baghdad.
Officially, the wall is being constructed to
protect Sunnis from Shi'ite militias, but many
Iraqis see it as a method to isolate Sunnis and
segregate them from Shi'ites. Ammar Wajih of the
Iraqi Islamic Party (a Sunni group) said the
separation barrier "only increases sectarianism
among citizens. The [Maliki] government has not
understood that military effort is needed, but it
does not solve all problems."
Maliki
appeared to have second thoughts on Sunday when he
called for work on the wall to stop. It was not
immediately known whether the US military will
heed the call.
In another positive gesture
on the weekend, Maliki announced that he will not
replace the six Sadrists with members of the
Iran-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). This
parliamentary group is headed by Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who has used the
Ministry of Interior since 2004 to arrest, torture
and at times eliminate Sunnis.
Neither
will the Sadrists be replaced with independents
close to Muqtada. Maliki did not specify whether
the posts will be given to Sunnis, but what can be
understood from the rhetoric coming out of his
office is that they certainly won't be given to
religiously driven Shi'ites, or those who are
overtly pro-Iran.
This comes as some
relief to the Sunni community, which has been
angered at the Sadrists controlling the ministries
of Health, Transport, Education and Tourism, among
others.
Nasser al-Rubai, the spokesman for
the Sadr bloc, confirmed that the six replacements
will not be Sadrists and called on Maliki "not to
waste time in grabbing at the historical
opportunity created by the Sadrists" for the
government to promote reconciliation and restore
confidence among ordinary Iraqis.
Investing in the public relations stunt
further, Rubai added that "the objective of the
[resignations] was to unmask those who blame the
stalemate in government performance on sectarian
allocations" of seats.
The premier's media
office said that a committee composed of
independents and members of the UIA has been
created to find replacements for the Sadr
ministers.
Leading Shi'ite cleric Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani even broke his long spell of
silence and commented, saying through his
representative in Karbala that the replacements
should be non-sectarian independent officials,
again heightening speculation that all of this was
a step toward "extending a hand of support to the
Sunnis".
About-turn on Ba'athists
The greatest gesture toward the Sunnis,
however, is proposed amendments to the
de-Ba'athification laws. A bill to this effect is
now before Parliament.
When the process of
de-Ba'athification started in 2003, it targeted
the 1.4 million Ba'athists in Iraq, most of them
Sunnis, who had joined the party either out of
professional need to get promoted in the civil
service or army, or for protection in a
patron-client society.
Under the US
initiative, Ba'athists were collectively fired
from government jobs, the diplomatic service and
the army. Many who had committed crimes under the
former Ba'ath regime were put in jail. But not all
Ba'athists were bad, and not all of them had
joined for political reasons, Khalilzad argued.
Many prominent Iraqi Sunni families were
traditional Ba'athists, yet all of them were
excluded from the new Iraq because under the new
constitution, the Ba'ath Party was coined a
"terrorist" organization.
This has been
one of the major obstacles to reconciliation
between Sunnis and Shi'ites on one front, and
Sunnis and Maliki on another. During his Baghdad
trip, Gates stressed the need to change the
de-Ba'athification laws. Maliki was visibly not
pleased. Nor was Sistani, who spoke out against
the changes. Nor was Muqtada, who publicly and
immediately came out and refused any amendments to
de-Ba'athification, claiming that the Ba'athists
had murdered many scholars from his family,
including his father.
The
de-Ba'athification laws were recently renamed the
"Accountability and Reconciliation Project" and
presented to the chairman of the
de-Ba'athification committee, Ahmad Chalabi, by
the United States. One of the proposals, which
Maliki will eventually have to sign off on to stay
in power, guarantees comeback jobs to the
Fedayeen, a state-run militia that operated under
Saddam's direct orders. Former exile Chalabi was
once the US neo-cons' darling and a main proponent
of the invasion of Iraq.
All members of
Saddam's security services and the once feared
Republican Guard, too, will be entitled to their
equivalent positions. Former junior Ba'athists
will be reinstated and senior Ba'athists will be
given immunity against any possible charges of war
crimes under Saddam.
More shocking, and
much to the pleasure of Sunnis, the law will allow
Ba'athists to reach any position of government,
including prime minister, Speaker of Parliament or
president, if voted for by the people.
Chalabi, who is outraged by the US
proposals, hurriedly appeared in numerous press
interviews, challenging the amendments to
de-Ba'athification. He called out to the Iranians,
who are equally opposed, trying to win their
sympathy by saying that the United States is
"provoking" them in Iraq. He went even further
with his messages to the mullahs, saying that US
accusations against Tehran are "unjust and
unrealistic".
Chalabi explained that only
38,000 Ba'athists out of the total 1.4 million
have been brought to court and held accountable
since the downfall of Saddam. This includes his
security services, officers, intelligence chiefs
and inner entourage.
Of about 38,000
targeted by de-Ba'athification, 32,000 are already
eligible for their former pensions or can return
to their former jobs. Of these, Chalabi said,
2,500 (all presumably Sunni) have requested their
pensions and 14,000 have asked to be reinstated in
their former jobs.
Chalabi referred to the
commander of the Baghdad security plan, a man who
is close to Maliki, who was a commander under
Saddam. Chalabi argues that the de-Ba'athification
laws are not that bad and need not be amended.
But the final word is not his. It is in
the hands of Parliament, and Maliki and President
Jalal Talabani, to survive, will find themselves
obliged to approve what the Americans want before
June.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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