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Opposition in Baghdad among Kurdish,
Shiite parties to Iraq Study Group
13.12.2006
By James Cogan
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December 13, 2006
The findings of the US Iraq Study Group headed by
Republican powerbroker James Baker have been
rejected out of hand by the Kurdish nationalist
parties and the Shiite fundamentalist Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
The most strident criticisms came from Iraqi
President and prominent Kurdish leader Jalal
Talabani, who denounced the ISG report as “unjust
and unfair”, “dangerous”, “an insult to the Iraqi
people” and “dead in the water”.
The Kurdish groups were among the most ardent
supporters of the US invasion, viewing it as the
means of transforming Iraq’s predominantly Kurdish
northern provinces into a de-facto independent
state. Under the new Iraqi constitution imposed
under US occupation, the north was placed under the
jurisdiction of a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).
The constitution granted the KRG complete authority
over all new oil production in the region. As well,
it stipulated that a referendum take place by
December 2007 to determine whether the inhabitants
of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk wished to join the
KRG.
The incorporation of Kirkuk would give the KRG
authority over as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s oil
reserves. In the lead-up to the referendum, there
have been a series of accusations that Kurdish
militiamen are using threats and violence to
pressure ethnic Arabs and Turkomen to leave Kirkuk
in order to create an overwhelmingly majority
Kurdish population.
Like the Kurds, the Shiite establishment largely
supported the US invasion as a means to supplant the
traditional Sunni Arab establishment that had held
power in Iraq since the country’s formation in 1920.
Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party rested on the Sunni
propertied and tribal elite. Shiite parties have
dominated each of the puppet governments formed
under US occupation. Most units in the new army,
interior ministry and police are made up of Shiites,
giving their participation in US operations against
Sunni Arab insurgents the character of a sectarian
conflict.
SCIRI, one of the most powerful Shiite factions, has
aggressively supported the federalist constitution
and declared its intention to form a Shiite regional
government encompassing nine southern provinces of
Iraq. Under the US-backed constitution, the bulk of
oil revenues would flow into the pockets of such a
regional identity, as 60 percent of the country’s
reserves are located within its proposed borders.
The ISG report cuts directly across the ambitions of
the Kurdish and Shiite parties. In the face of a
society collapsing into a Shiite-Sunni civil war, an
entrenched Sunni insurgency against American troops,
rising tensions throughout the Middle East and
tremendous domestic opposition in the US, the ISG
advocated a new political strategy. It called for
overtures to the former Sunni ruling elite and
regional talks aimed at re-establishing a strong
central Iraqi government to assist US forces to
impose “stability”.
Baker specifically recommended the rewriting of the
constitution to oppose regional control over oil
revenues and recommended that the Kirkuk referendum
be indefinitely delayed. Moreover, the ISG called
for the future of Kirkuk to be discussed by an
“International Iraq Support Group,” including
Turkey, Syria and Iran—all states that repress their
own substantial Kurdish minorities and bitterly
oppose the emergence of a de-facto Kurdish state on
their borders. The ISG also recommended a
substantial reversal of the de-Baathification policy
used by the US occupation and its Shiite and Kurdish
backers to marginalise the Sunni elite.
Kurdish reaction to the ISG report was particularly
vitriolic. Masoud Barzani, a longtime Kurdish leader
and KRG President, issued a statement on December 7,
the day after the release of the Baker report.
Opposing central control of oil revenues, Barzani
stated: “We reiterate our commitment to the Iraqi
constitution... and reject attempts to alter this
solution”. Denouncing the proposal to postpone the
Kirkuk referendum, the statement declared it would
“in no way be accepted by the people of the Kurdish
region”. Outside involvement in discussions on the
city’s fate was condemned as “counter to the
interests of the Iraqi people and especially the
interests of the people of the Kurdish region”.
Clearly threatening Kurdish unrest, Barzani declared
that the ISG offered “unrealistic and unreasonable
recommendations in the hope of helping the US
extricate itself from a difficult position... we,
then, on behalf of the people of the Kurdistan
region, reject everything that is against the
interests of Iraq and the Kurdistan region”.
Going further than Barzani, Iraqi President Talabani
rejected one of the key ISG proposals—embedding US
troops within every unit of the Iraqi military. Up
to three of the 10 divisions of the new Iraqi Army
are based in the north and most of their officers
and soldiers are Kurds. The Kurdish nationalists do
not want them under the influence of American
personnel whose orders may well run counter to the
KRG’s aims.
Talabani pointedly recalled the aftermath of the
1991 Gulf War, when the first Bush administration
called for Kurds and Shiites to rise up, then
ordered the US military to do nothing as Saddam
Hussein’s military crushed the uprisings. George
Bush I and Baker decided that the survival of
Hussein’s regime was more advantageous to US
interests in the Middle East than any new regime
that emerged out of a successful rebellion. Among
both Shiites and Kurds, this is still remembered as
a monstrous betrayal. Referring to the IRG report,
Talabani declared that “we can smell the attitude of
James Baker in 1991 when he liberated Kuwait but
left Saddam in power”.
A December 2 op-ed in the Washington Post by
Najmaldin Karim, the president of the Washington
Kurdish Institute, described the ISG report as
“unlikely to offer anything other than the same
discredited policies that for 60 years created a
dangerous illusion of stability in the Middle East,
a ‘stability’ bought with the blood of Middle
Easterners and that produced such horrors as the
massive 1991 bloodletting...” In preparing their
report, ISG members did not visit the Kurdish
region. Karim denounced this as stemming from the
“ideological prejudice” of the “diehard Arabists”
that Baker relied upon for advice.
Iraq’s Shiite establishment centred their
condemnation of the ISG report on its calls for a
regional conference to discuss Iraq, insisting
instead that Iraqis should decide their future.
Regional states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria
and Turkey all have oppressed Shiite or Kurdish
minorities and would be most likely to support
Baker’s opposition to federalism and turn to the
Sunni elite.
SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim declared that the
ISG report “contains inaccurate information that is
based on dishonest sources”. In a speech delivered
days before the findings were released and just
after meeting with President Bush, he told the
Washington Peace Institute: “Federalism definitely
will not divide Iraq, but it might cause some fear
in some countries in the region where they were used
to the singular rule, which deprives the other
minorities from exercising their religious and
national freedom and legitimate rights.”
Hakim denounced the opposition to federalism within
Iraq—Sunni and Shiite—as the position of those who
“believe that whoever is in control of the
government in Baghdad can rule according to what he
desires”. Hakim made clear that he was including the
rival Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
who calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of US
forces and backs a centralised state. Stressing
SCIRI’s stance, he declared “there is no way to
achieve a fair political and administrative system
except by federalism”.
The fervour of the Kurdish parties’ and SCIRI’s
opposition to the ISG report reflects the fact that
the Bush administration has already rejected its key
recommendations. The White House intends to base
itself on the only political forces that have
consistently collaborated with the US agenda of
opening up of Iraq’s lucrative oil reserves to US
corporations and establishing a long-term military
footprint in the Middle East.
It is no accident that within days of the ISG
findings being published, the international press
contains reports that the White House is urging
SCIRI and the Kurdish parties to form a new
government with the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which
was the only Sunni formation to accept the
federalist constitution. Iraqi vice-president and
IIP leader Tariq al-Hashemi brought forward a
planned visit to Washington to this week and held
personal talks with Bush on Monday.
Intense discussions have also been taking place over
an oil revenue-sharing agreement that would deliver
a greater share to a Sunni region in central and
western Iraq in line with the IIP’s demands. In
return, the so-called “national unity” regime would
work with the US military to attempt to destroy the
most recalcitrant opponents of the US occupation—the
Sunni insurgents and the Shiite Sadrist movement.
wsws org
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