DAMASCUS - United States President Barack Obama's sudden arrival in Baghdad
from Turkey on Tuesday - his first trip to Iraq since becoming president in
January - took priority over other news coming out of the Iraqi capital, but
meaningful events were also taking place elsewhere.
On the same day, Iraqi National Dialogue Minister Akram al-Hakim landed in
Cairo to meet with former Ba'athists and ex-officers from the Iraqi army in
exile. He had been sent to Egypt by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to ask the
supporters of former president Saddam Hussein to renounce violence and to
return to participate in government.
While Hakim tackled critical points such as a general amnesty which would free
thousands of Iraqi Sunnis, Obama was meeting
with Maliki at al-Faw, one of the magnificent palaces owned by Saddam while he
led the country. The top issues on Obama's agenda included the issue of the
separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, which he had condemned as terrorists to
his Turkish hosts, and the withdrawal of 142,000 US troops from Iraq by 2011.
Coinciding with the US president's visit were two significant developments on
the Iraqi street. One was a reduction in the sentence from three years to one
of Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who become a folk hero for throwing
his shoes at ex-president George W Bush during his last official visit to
Baghdad. Zaidi's arrest had infuriated ordinary Iraqis - especially Sunnis -
and caused massive street demonstrations, but he is now expected to be released
as soon as December.
The same demonstrators who called for the downfall of Bush last December seemed
particularly happy with Obama today, praising him for cleaning up the aftermath
of the US invasion in 2003, a mess that they feel he was not responsible for,
and that he had opposed since day one. Ordinary Iraqis saw it in much simpler
terms: "Under Bush, Zaidi had been sentenced to three years, but under Obama,
he is coming out next December. We are on the right track."
While all of this was happening, one of Saddam's former top chiefs, Izzat
al-Douri, came out with a voice recording calling for a new relationship with
Obama's America, but only after the US stopped its combatant operations in
August 2010 and withdrew completely from Iraq in 2011. This message is
significant, as it has come from Douri, who is the last surviving senior
Ba'athist official and has a US$10 million bounty on his head. He has not been
seen in public since Saddam's downfall in 2003.
The reduced sentence of Zaidi and the new tone of Douri are causing a stir in
Iraqi officialdom and Sunni circles. The root of the reconciliation lies in the
prime minister's backtracking over earlier remarks accusing Sunnis of carrying
out six deadly car bomb attacks in Shi'ite districts around the Iraqi capital
on Monday.
When initially commenting on the car bombs, Maliki was clearly very angry. He
first accused the Ba'ath Party, only to realize that this was politically
unwise, might trigger more violence, and could upset the relative tranquility
he has been boasting of since mid-2008. The car bombs were horrendous,
occurring within three hours they killed nearly 40 people and wounded 130, with
all of the casualties Shi'ites and 10 deaths in Sadr City. Maliki originally
claimed that the Ba'ath Party had carried out the attacks as a "gift" to mark
his 62nd birthday.
Advisers then whispered into the prime minister's ear, reminding him that his
real concern was actually no longer the Ba'athists. Deprived of arms and proper
leadership - with Saddam gone and all of his top generals behind bars - the
Ba'athists no longer threaten Iraqi security the way they did in 2003-2005.
Their current commander, Douri, is 67 years old and reportedly in bad health.
That explains why Hakim is in Cairo, and why even Iyad Allawi, who served as
interim prime minister between 2004-5, has said that he is willing to sit down
and talk to Douri. "I support the integration of the Ba'athists into the
political process," Allawi has said, signaling for the first time that working
with the Ba'ath Party would be a benefit rather than a burden for the Iraqi
government.
A integration of the Ba'athists would help bridge the gap between powerful
Shi'ites and disgruntled Sunnis, and cost the central government nothing.
Maliki's real problem lies in the Sunni Awakening Councils, which were created
by the outgoing Bush team in 2007 to serve as an armed wing for the Sunni
community in their fight against the al-Qaeda-led insurgency. Then, Maliki
aggressively argued against the councils, which were made up of Sunni
tribesmen, claiming that this legitimized Sunni militias and left the Shi'ites
with nothing.
He argued that after the Awakening Councils were finished combating al-Qaeda,
they would turn their guns against Shi'ites. Maliki responded by encouraging
young Shi'ites to enlist, en masse, in the security forces, while paying little
attention to their education, training or discipline levels. The argument then
was, "If the Sunnis are going to legitimize their militias, so will we."
He has since been searching for creative ways to muzzle the councils, and in
March began arresting several of their senior commanders. He accused them of
establishing contacts with al-Qaeda and said on April 4: "This is a message
sent to the people taking the same path as organized criminals." Many claimed
that the arrest of council members was an attempt at settling scores with old
enemies rather than bringing law and order to Iraq, and it was actually these
arrests that triggered the six car bombs.
Despite the progress, it is still likely that Hakim will return from Cairo
empty-handed, as he is a senior member of the Iran-funded Islamic party the
Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC). A great deal of bad blood exists between
the Ba'athists and the SIIC, as the latter fought with the Iranian army against
Saddam during the devastating Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988.
Hakim tried mending fences with them in 2007, and failed. An intermediary like
Allawi may have been better for the job, as he himself is a former Ba'athist,
but he too failed to bring the Ba'athists onboard during his tenure. If Maliki
is serious about achieving results, he needs to take the initiative and
publicly extend his own hand to the Ba'athists.
Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.
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