DAMASCUS - Last week, Arabs in Kirkuk unified their efforts to create a
political front, aimed at counterbalancing Kurdish ambitions in the oil-rich
area ahead of upcoming Iraqi elections.
The coalition, which will be called the Arab Political Council, includes
scholars, independents, tribal leaders and Arab politicians from the Arab Unity
bloc. The new coalition aims at seemingly telling the world: there are Arabs in
Kirkuk - not just Kurds - and they are opposed to annexing the town to Iraqi
Kurdistan, or implementing Article 140, which calls for a referendum in Kirkuk,
to see if its population wishes to remain part of Iraq, or join Kurdistan.
The Arab front was not born by accident; regional heavyweights in the region
have recently been exerting a lot of influence in both
Sunni-Shi'ite feuds, and Arab-Kurdish rivalries. Neither Turkey, nor Syria or
Iran are pleased at the revival of Kurdish ambitions in Kirkuk. Needless to
say, the Kurds are uncomfortable with the new front in Kirkuk, and are alarmed
by a statement made by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last week calling for a
stronger central government in Baghdad.
Achieving that, he noted, requires constitutional changes, as "the constitution
is not perfect and is not a good formula for building a modern state". The
Kurds fear that if Maliki gets his way, their autonomy in Kurdistan will be
threatened, giving the Baghdad government more say in Kurdish affairs. There
are already rising fears in the Kurdish community that with the strong backing
of Iran, Maliki is bracing himself to become a new Iraqi strongman, or as some
people are now saying, "another Saddam Hussein". When Maliki speaks, they
understand this to be the wish of Iran and the Iranians are not too pleased
with Kurdish ambitions that could spill over into Iran itself.
Constitutional changes are very difficult to pass in Iraq because it takes only
three out of 18 provinces to block any amendments. Kirkuk itself, which is
swarming with Kurds, makes up three of the provinces. Maliki is probably
cursing his ill-fated honeymoon with the Kurds, in 2007-2008, when he
personally supervised the uprooting of Arabs from Kirkuk to increase the city's
Kurdish population, claiming that Arabs had illegally been brought there, by
Saddam.
Then, Maliki needed Kurdish support to keep his coalition cabinet alive, after
Sunni heavyweights and Shi'ites loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr walked
out on him. He has since parted with the Kurds, partly after mending broken
fences with Muqtada, but mainly because Iran was unimpressed with him cuddling
up to the Kurds, claiming that this would alienate him in the Arab world,
making him lose support - and eventually power in Baghdad.
It is wrong to believe that Iran encourages Maliki into pursuing policies that
are hostile to Iraqi Sunni Arabs. On the contrary, they want Maliki to succeed,
and realize that he cannot do that if he continues to come across as nothing
but a Shi'ite leader. He has to sound and act like a pan-Iraqi leader,
appealing to all ethnic groups and sects while using his post to protect and
empower Iraqi Shi'ites.
Iran wants him to defuse tensions with Sunni Arabs for the sake of maintaining
power, since Iraq cannot be ruled by Shi'ites alone.
Having said that, one wonders why Maliki closed the door this weekend on any
kind of reconciliation with Ba'athists affiliated with the regime of Saddam.
Was it also an Iranian wish, born out of a conviction that no dialogue can
succeed with those who battled the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1980 to 1988?
Or was it Maliki acting at will, eager to please the Iranians yet without
having held prior consultations with them on what to do with the Ba'athists?
Over the weekend, Maliki threw sand in the eyes of optimists by saying that he
refused reconciliation with whom he called "murderers and criminals", in
reference to members of the outlawed Ba'ath Party. "It is not justice," he
noted, "to reconcile with those responsible for widowing women, orphaning
children and destroying the country." These people, he noted, took the country
from war to war, "and did not apologize, not even until this moment." They
should be punished, he added, not rewarded by being brought out of jail and put
into government positions.
Maliki went on to warn his countrymen "against satellite channels" that are
subsidized by political parties and aimed at "distorting" the minds of Iraqi
voters ahead of the 2010 elections. Ammar al-Hakim, a staunch Maliki ally who
co-leads the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) with his father, doubted the
sincerity of the so-called reconciliation, claiming that this was being imposed
on Iraq by outside players.
"We ask those who are calling on us to reconcile; have you reconciled with your
enemies? Have you set the terrorists from your prisons free [in clear reference
to Saudi Arabia] and said, let bygones be bygones?" For its part, the Ministry
of National Dialogue, which is held by a member of SIIC, said that talks with
the Ba'athists in Cairo "were now history". The strong words against the
Ba'athists came after a short visit by US Vice President Joe Biden to Baghdad,
where he lobbied with the prime minister to bring members of the Ba'ath Party
back into government.
Maliki was responding to Iranian anger at Biden's interference in Iraqi
affairs. Speaking to a tribal gathering in Anbar shortly after the Biden visit,
he said: "We will not allow anyone to interfere in our internal affairs or to
be a supervisor of the national reconciliation or political process."
The difference in what Biden said, and what Maliki wanted to hear, was clear on
the face of the prime minister during his press conference with Biden. Maliki
was visibly angry and hurt, reportedly because Biden dictated what he wanted to
see in Baghdad, without hearing out the prime minister's worries. While en
route to Washington, Biden spoke to The New York Times, hinting that the future
of Iraqi-US relations depended on Maliki's ability "to get it right on the
political side". He bluntly said that this was why he went to Iraq, "and this
is the reason I'll be coming back".
Perhaps alluding to the same issue of reconciliation, Obama, during July 4
Independence Day festivities, said: "Iraq's future now rests in the hands of
its own people," adding that the mission "won't be without problems".
Reportedly, Biden is trying to get Iraqis from all sides to go to Washington
towards the end of 2009 to speak about reconciliation - under the chairmanship
of Obama. Under this formula, the Ba'athists would be included in the talks,
and certainly, in the new government, which neither Maliki nor Iran are too
enthusiastic about. According to al-Ahram Weekly, Biden urged Maliki to allow
Ba'athists to regroup into a new party and run in the 2010 elections.
The proposed Washington conference will be attended by several Arab countries,
which will use their influence (in reference to Syria) to guarantee that the
Iraqi Ba'athists will lay down their arms in exchange for a greater role in
decision-making "if they are allowed to function as a legitimate political
party".
The last thing Maliki needed, in trying to walk the tightrope between Sunnis
and Shi'ites, was Biden and Iran breathing down his neck. He feels that
American influence in Iraq is retreating because Obama is clearly uninterested
in pursuing any of George W Bush's policies towards Iraq. It is now clear that
Obama's focus is on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, rather than Iraq and the
entire Arab-Israeli conflict.
He feels that Obama has abandoned Iraq, while holding onto plenty of American
dictates. Last week, he was enraged that the US refused to hand him 26,000
Iraqi prisoners, as part of the Security of Forces Agreement. The US claims
that Iraqi jails and prison administrators are not qualified to handle these
prisoners and might maltreat or torture them once they are transferred to Iraqi
control. Maliki has told his aids that this is pure hypocrisy, given how Iraqi
prisoners were treated by the Americans at Abu Ghraib.
Biden's dictates, along with the desires of Maliki's Iranian allies, account
for much of the failed reconciliation efforts in Iraq and show that the future
is not as promising as most people wanted it to be for Maliki.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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