|
The alliance America helped build appears set to
create a religious, federal state, opposite of the
secular, united Iraq that Washington seeks.
BAGHDAD — They are the orphans of Iraqi history,
grown up and remaking the country's political and
social order. But the formidable alliance between
the long-marginalized Shiite Muslims and Kurds, a
union nurtured by Washington, now threatens to
undermine U.S. goals in the new Iraq.
The aim of U.S. policymakers has been a united Iraqi
state with secular leanings in which the Kurds, who
have been strong American allies, would promote a
government aligned with the West. Instead, the Kurds
appear poised to accept alliances that guarantee
them a secular state in Kurdistan in exchange for
their acceptance of a more religious order in the
rest of Iraq.
"This was one of the great flaws in the American
strategy," said a former diplomat who is close to
the Kurds. "They thought that because the Kurds are
American allies that they would share their vision
of Iraq as a whole, whereas anybody who understood
it would see [that] the Kurds wanted out of Iraq and
to be left alone."
Although the Shiite-Kurd alliance is replete with
ideological contradictions and conflicting aims,
they are held together by mutual interests — and the
power that comes with dominating contemporary Iraq's
political structure. Together, the two won 181 seats
in the new parliament: 128 for the Shiites and 53
for the Kurds. The total, however, rises to more
than 184 if two smaller parities, one Kurdish and
one Shiite, are counted — giving them the two-thirds
majority needed to form a government.
The new lineup, which will rule for the next four
years, offers other challenges to the U.S. goal of
keeping Iraq united. Negotiations are underway to
choose a prime minister and form the government, a
process expected to take at least six weeks. U.S.
officials are involved in the discussions and
strongly urging the Shiites and Kurds to give Sunni
Muslim Arabs a share of power.
But neither the Shiites nor the Kurds trust the
Sunnis enough to want to make them real players in
the new government, diplomats say, and it is
unlikely they will get any key ministries,
especially those controlling the security services.
But without Sunnis in powerful positions in
security, it is unlikely that the new government
will be able to stem the insurgency.
"There isn't going to be any deal between the
insurgents and Bayan Jabr," a Western diplomat in
Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of
Iraq's controversial interior minister, a Shiite.
Both Shiites and Kurds defend their right,
guaranteed in the constitution, to maintain local
defense forces for semiautonomous regions, such as
Kurdistan, or the Shiite-dominated provinces in the
south. But it is only a matter of time before Sunnis
create a defense force for western Iraq.
"When it comes to saying where the border is between
one region and another, what happens if the Sunnis
send their defense forces and the Shiites send
theirs?" asked a Western diplomat in Baghdad.
Some analysts still say the Kurdish-Shiite
partnership could break, forcing a new configuration
of Iraqi politics more palatable to American
interests. "The devil is in the details," one
Western official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
The official noted that it had taken almost three
months to form a transitional government last year,
and that was to last just nine months. "This will be
much harder," the official said.
The alliance of Shiites and Kurds has its roots in
Iraqi history and in a shared antipathy for longtime
dictator Saddam Hussein. But the partnership thrived
more recently because of shared interests: Each
wants to be free to run the part of country where
its group is dominant.
Abdelaziz Hakim, the Shiite ayatollah who leads the
Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
stands for the kind of religious state that makes
the generally secular Kurds uncomfortable. But the
Kurdish parliament welcomed him in December for a
speech that appeared calculated to cement ties
between the groups.
"We have struggled together to topple the regime of
dictatorship and sectarianism and to ensure that our
Iraq remains safe and free," Hakim told the Kurdish
legislators in the northern city of Irbil, to what
witnesses described as thunderous applause. "The
religious authorities have always defended Iraqis."
Hakim was evoking the powerful memory of his father,
the Grand Ayatollah Sayed Muhsin Hakim. In 1963,
when Iraq's newly ascendant Sunni Arab nationalists
were consolidating their power and intensifying a
campaign against autonomy-seeking Kurds, the elder
Hakim issued an unprecedented fatwa that forbade
Shiites in the army from killing Kurds.
"The faithful were forced to make a decision," said
Mohammed Hadi Asadi, head of the Horizons Center for
Iraqi Studies and Research, a government-funded
institute close to Hakim's camp. "They could either
desert the army or fire their weapons into the air."
Sporadic contact continued throughout the 1970s, but
the collaboration really took root in the 1980s,
when the Shiites and Kurds fleeing Hussein set up
camp in neighboring Iran, then at war with Iraq, and
began plotting against the dictator.
The younger Hakim, then a leader of the Badr Brigade
militia, was among the first to visit the Kurdish
village of Halabja after Hussein sprayed the town
with chemical weapons in 1988, killing up to 5,000
people. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.S.
established a semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in
northern Iraq, and Hakim's militia set up bases
there
The two communities share an interest in creating a
federal system with a weak center. "The Kurds
basically had two ways to go: They could go with …
the seculars or they could go with the Shiite
route," said the former diplomat who is close to the
Kurds. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani "took the
position that their interests were more aligned with
the Shiite religious groups."
Although Shiites are hardly uniform in their
political views, they appear ready to put aside
their differences, at least temporarily, in order to
exercise power. With that in mind, firebrand cleric
Muqtada Sadr, who despises the vision of a federal
Iraq, has thrown in his lot with the new order,
bolstering the Shiite bargaining position and
numbers in parliament.
U.S. officials had privately hoped the Sadr camp
would break away from moderate Islamists such as
Hakim, and thereby diminish the size of the main
Shiite slate, the United Iraqi Alliance.
In contrast to the warm ties between the house of
Hakim and the Kurds, Sadr and his followers have had
stormy relations with other Shiite parties, accusing
them of betraying the elder Grand Ayatollah Mohammed
Sadeq Sadr, whose assassination is widely believed
to have been carried out by Hussein's security
forces.
But the younger Sadr was coaxed into the larger
Shiite fold in part because of the lure of being in
the government and controlling job-rich ministries,
such as health and transportation.
"They found new opportunities in the government and
made good accomplishments in Iraqi society," said
Humam Hamoodi, a Shiite lawmaker. "Being near
authority made them more practical in their
political tastes. Once you get a taste of power,
it's hard to let it go."
But with Sadr and the Kurds onboard, it is far from
clear what will be left for Sunnis.
A big concern will be how to accommodate the Sunni
Arabs of the Iraqi Accordance Front, led by the
Iraqi Islamic Party, that won 44 seats in the new
parliament. The party's ties to the Hakim clan go
back to 1958, when the Communist-leaning Arab
nationalist government cracked down on Islamists.
The elder Hakim, who died in 1970, gave Sunnis
sanctuary in Najaf.
Whereas Sunni Arabs generally accepted Hussein's
rule — which favored them — Islamists such as the
Iraqi Islamic Party and Adnan Dulaimi, former head
of the Sunni Waqf endowment, generally resisted,
refusing to praise the president or his secular
government during sermons and willing to risk jail
for their beliefs.
"Dulaimi, in particular, has a very honorable
history when it comes to the Saddam rule," said one
Iraqi official close to the Shiites. "These people
don't have blood on their hands."
Power-sharing is another matter, however. Officials
close to the Shiite parties were at a loss to name a
single ministry post they could give to a Sunni
because all are already spoken for by factions
within their own slate or by Kurds.
Not surprisingly, that is unlikely to satisfy the
group that ruled Iraq for the last 80 years.
www.latimes.com
Top |
® 