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Can They All Get Along in Iraq? Despite
the Report, Maybe They Can’t
8.12.2006
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December 8, 2006
BAGHDAD, December 7, -- The report from the Iraq
Study Group is as much a blueprint for internal
Iraqi policy as it is a road map for American policy
toward the nation, putting much responsibility for
resolving deep political divides on Iraqi leaders
who for nearly four years have demonstrated a
sectarian or ethnic bent that has precluded any kind
of political compromise.
The report makes it abundantly clear that United
States’ influence in this increasingly anarchic
country is fast declining and any chance for
stability will depend mostly on major political
shifts among the country’s leading Shiites, Sunni
Arabs and Kurds.
The report calls for political parties to suspend,
if not abandon, their ethnic and sectarian
prejudices in favor of a cooperative approach, a
concept referred to as national reconciliation.
Without it, the report says, “the security situation
cannot improve.”
Yet, many of the recommendations for national
reconciliation — ranging from welcoming former
members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party back into
government to delaying a vote on the administration
of the oil city of Kirkuk — appear to be based on an
assumption that the report itself calls into
question: that Iraq’s leadership has the political
will, or even the desire, to put national interests
before communal concerns.
“Iraq’s leaders often claim that they do not want a
division of the country, but we found that key Shia
and Kurdish leaders have little commitment to
national reconciliation,” the report says. “Many of
Iraq’s most powerful and well-positioned leaders are
not working toward a united Iraq.”
The recommendations given as a basis for national
reconciliation have already largely been prescribed
to the Iraqi leadership by Zalmay Khalilzad, the
American ambassador here. But since its installation
in the spring, the Shiite-led government of Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has made little
apparent progress in adopting any of them.
Some analysts say that in laying out tough mandates
for the Iraqi government, the Iraq Study Group may
be building a foundation for the United States to
make a so-called honorable withdrawal from the war.
Richard N. Haass, a former State Department official
and president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
said in a posting on the group’s Web site that the
commission’s report “begins to pave the way for a
U.S. move out of Iraq in a way that if push comes to
shove would attempt to place the lion’s share of the
burden on Iraq.”
He added: “It’s a way of essentially saying: ‘We
went the extra mile, but the failure shouldn’t be
blamed on the United States. It’s because the Iraqis
could not simply do their part.’ It’s the beginning
of an effort to shape or control what will be
competing narratives on why Iraq was lost, if in
fact it turns out to be lost.”
The tasks proposed to the Iraqis are political
minefields. The report calls for an immediate review
of the Iraqi Constitution, something that was
supposed to have been completed within months of
Parliament’s first meeting in the spring.
But the effort has stalled in the face of resistance
from Shiites and Kurds, who fear that the review
could overturn dearly held provisions on regional
autonomy. The Sunni Arabs, who are pushing for the
review, oppose regional autonomy because they fear
being excluded from any control over the nation’s
oil wealth, which is concentrated in the
Kurdish-dominated north and the Shiite-dominated
south.
The Kurds have also responded angrily to the
recommendation to postpone a referendum on whether
Kirkuk should join Iraqi Kurdistan. The report said
a vote, scheduled for next year, has the potential
to trigger “communal violence” among Kirkuk’s
Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen populations, transforming
the city into a powder keg.
In interviews after the report’s release, Kurdish
leaders insisted that they would not relent on the
schedule.
The report proposes the reintegration of Baathists
into national life, excluding only the top figures
of Mr. Hussein’s government. The measure would
reverse a “de-Baathification” process that has
marginalized thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked in
that government.
But powerful Shiite and Kurdish officials, whose
people bore the brunt of Mr. Hussein’s cruelty, have
blocked any efforts to amend the process. The
independent Iraqi commission in charge of purging
Baathists announced in November that it had proposed
revisions that would make the law less harsh, but
Western officials said those changes were merely
cosmetic.
The head of the commission, Ali Faisal al-Lami,
denounced the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation in
an interview on Thursday. “They only spoke to the
Iraqis who are against de-Baathification and adopted
their opinions,” he said. Most senior Baathists were
not intellectuals or highly skilled employees, he
said, and did not deserve a place in public life.
A recommendation for a “far-reaching” amnesty
program also faces a major obstacle in the Shiite
leadership. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a powerful Shiite
politician, has said he opposes amnesty for anyone
who has attacked or killed other Iraqis. Such an
exclusion disqualifies most of the Sunni-led
insurgency and would undoubtedly keep Sunni Arab
leaders from subscribing to the program.
Should Iraq’s leaders not reach consensus on this
and the other fraught measures that constitute the
national reconciliation plan, few people, not least
the members of the Iraq Study Group, offer any hope
of an end to the country’s worsening mayhem.
nytimes com
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