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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Bush's Meeting With A Murderer
Robert Dreyfuss
December 4, 2006
President George W. Bush meets today with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the turbaned
leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a
Shiite fundamentalist party that is strongly tied to Iran. In so doing, the
president is meeting with someone who, perhaps more than anyone else in
Iraq, is responsible for trying to destroy Iraqi national unity, prevent
national reconciliation among Iraqs ethnic and sectarian mix, and push
Iraq into civil war. Al-Hakim, who was virtually Fed-Exd into Iraq by the
Pentagon in March 2003, was a mainstay of the Iraqi National Congress, led
by neoconservative darling Ahmed Chalabi throughout the 1990s. And today
al-Hakim controls the SCIRI militia, the Badr Brigade, the Iraqi interior
ministry and many of Iraqs feared death squads. Not to put too fine a
point on it, Hakim is a mass murderer.
Whats stunning about Bushs encounter with al-Hakim is that it occurs
precisely at the moment when critically important bridges are being built
across Iraqs Sunni-Shiite dividebridges that al-Hakim is trying to blow up.
During a stop in Amman, Jordan, on his way to the United States, al-Hakim
point blank tried to torpedo the idea of an international conference that
might bring together Iraqs various factions. Such a conference was
explicitly proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week, who
offered to host it. A similar conference, or one like it, is likely to be
part of the recommendations that will be issued on Wednesday by the Iraq
Study Group, the panel co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker
and former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton. But al-Hakim trashes the
idea. "It is unreasonable or incorrect to discuss issues related to the
Iraqi people at international conferences," said the Shiite radical. "The
proposal is unrealistic, incorrect and illegal." (It is, of course,
perfectly legal.)
It is not the first time that al-Hakim has tried to undermine
reconciliation efforts. During repeated attempts by the Arab League to
organize a conference that would bring Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders
together with representatives of the armed resistance in search of an
accord, al-Hakim almost single-handedly destroyed the idea. And it is
al-Hakim, whose SCIRI controls much of Iraqs south, who is the driving
force behind efforts to create a separatist Shiite-run state in Iraqs south.
Hakims wrecking-ball effort is taking place in the context of
unprecedented efforts by leaders of Iraqs factions to create what many
Iraqi leaders are calling a "government of national salvation."
Such a government would topple and replace the ineffectual, clownish Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Supporters of the idea, who are getting ready to announce a National
Salvation Front in Iraq, include rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, many of
Iraqs Sunni leaders in and out of government, representatives of the Iraqi
resistance and perhaps even some important Kurdish leaders.
Last week, when the feckless Maliki traveled to Jordan to meet Bush,
Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his 30 members of parliament to suspend their
participation and pulled five cabinet ministers out of Malikis government.
Sadrs Mahdi Army, one of the most powerful of Iraqs armed factions and
one which has been involved in death squads and assassinations itself,
controls large parts of east Baghdad and many areas of the south, and they
have fiercely opposed Hakims SCIRI. According to Sadr, his political
forces will not rejoin the government until the United States has announced
a timetable for the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Sadr is now reaching out to Sunni and Kurdish leaders to form an
anti-occupation bloc that will represent the vast majority of Iraqi public
opinion. Polls have shown that up to 80 percent of Sunni Arabs and 60
percent of Shiite Arabs want an immediate end to the occupation.
Among those supporting the new National Salvation Front, along with Sadr,
are Saleh Mutlaq, the Sunni leader of Iraqs National Dialogue Front; Tariq
al-Hashemi, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party; former Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, and many others. According to the Iraqi newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yawm,
Mutlaq described the front as a broad cross-section of Iraqis opposed to
the U.S. occupation:
Mutlaq added that the new front will include a number of groups that are
not participating in the current Iraqi government including Baathists,
pan-Arabists, the Founding Conference that includes 46 political movements,
the old Iraqi army leadership, and tribal leaders from the middle and south
of Iraq. In addition, the front will include representatives from Turcoman,
Yazidi, and Kurdish patriotic leaders who are against the occupation and
for Iraq's unity, and other Christian movements that believe in Iraq's unity.
Mutlaq also said that seven leading Iraqi Shiite ayatollahs will support
the new grouping.
Even as the National Salvation Front takes shape, there is strong evidence
that Sunni and Shiite clerics are reaching out to each other.
Two weeks ago, Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that Sunni clerics issue a fatwa ,
or religious order, condemning killings of Iraqi civilians by al-Qaida
types and offering Sunni help to rebuild the domed mosque in Samarra that
was destroyed in a bombing in February. It was that bombing that touched
over the most severe phase of Iraqs civil war, setting of a wave of
reprisal killings among Shiites and Sunnis.
Since Sadrs call, several leading Sunni clerics have done as Sadr asked,
according to the Los Angeles Times, including top Sunni religious leaders
in Basra, Nasariyah, Amarah and Samaweh. All four were associated with the
Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the leading Sunni religious group in
Iraq, which has close ties to the Sunni insurgency. Not only that, but
Harith al-Dhari, the leader of the AMS, issued a
<http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-sunnis30nov30,1,4562125.story>blunt
condemnation of al-Qaida:
Al Qaeda is part of the resistance, but the resistance is of two kinds. The
resistance that only resists occupation, this we support one hundred per
cent. The resistance that mixes up resisting the occupation and killing
innocents, even if it calls itself resistance, this we condemn.
Two weeks ago, the Iraqi interior ministry, which is heavily controlled by
Hakims SCIRI, issued an arrest warrant for al-Dhari, accusing him of
maintaining ties to "terrorists."
This sort of inter-communal reconciliation is precisely what Iraq needs.
Furthermore, to build it will require that Iraqis come together on the one
issue about which most of them agree: ending the U.S. occupation. There is,
without doubt, a majority of Iraqs parliament opposed to the occupation.
To create a replacement government of anti-U.S. Iraqis, who would then
demand that the United States leave Iraq, would be a difficult task at
best, because of the very presence of 150,000 U.S. troops and Americas
overbearing ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. Furthermore, it is a fragile
effort: a major assassination or targeted violence could shatter it before
it even gets off the ground.
Still, it is perhaps Iraqs last, best hope for ending its civil war and
starting to recreate a functioning state. Against this, there is talk
inside the Bush administration, of "picking a winner," of choosing sides in
Iraqs civil warwhich, of course, means backing the Shiites. Such a notion
is a nonstarter, if for no other reason than the question: Which Shiites?
For the Bush administration, it could only mean SCIRI, Hakims band of
thugs and assassins.
If so, it would be the last, ugly mistake for President Bushs merry band
of incompetents, bunglers and war criminals. The release of the
Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq on Wednesday will signal the end of the Bush
administrations neoconservative-driven war policy, and the beginning of a
new, realist-dominated consensus that Americas foreign policy
establishment hopes will restore some of the U.S. prestige and influence
that has been eviscerated by Bushs invasion of Iraq.
It is too much, perhaps, to expect from the Bush administration, but heres
an idea. Instead of trying to court Hakim and SCIRI to support a continued
U.S. occupation of Iraq, the White House ought to acknowledge and heed the
growing body of opinion in Iraq that wants the United States out, fast.
Robert Dreyfuss is an Alexandria, Va.-based writer specializing in politics
and national security issues. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the
United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan
Books, 2005), a contributing editor at The Nation and a writer for Mother
Jones, The American Prospect and Rolling Stone. He can be reached through
his website, www.robertdreyfuss.com.
source:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28746&hd=&size=1&l=e
===
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