[WCUSP] Iraq: The Other Surge

[yvonne simmons]

> WORTH READING!
> Iraq: The Other Surge
> 
>  by ROBERT DREYFUSS
> 
>  [from the October 29, 2007 issue]
>  <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071029/dreyfuss>
> 
>  Perversely, and entirely unintentionally, recent
> US-
>  caused events in Iraq have sparked the one thing
> capable
>  of both forcing an end to the American occupation
> and
>  uniting the people of Iraq around a common purpose:
>  Iraqi nationalism. Last seen, briefly, during the
>  summer, when the Iraqi soccer team's victory
> brought its
>  countrymen out in the streets in all shades of
> ethnic
>  and sectarian variety, nationalism in Iraq has been
>  revived recently as a result of three simultaneous
> US
>  actions.
> 
>  Those events are, first, the misguided effort, led
> by
>  Senator Joe Biden, to partition Iraq into three
> mini-
>  states, which passed the Senate 75 to 23 September
> 26;
>  second, the September 16 killing of seventeen
> Iraqis by
>  trigger-happy Blackwater security forces in a
> traffic-
>  clogged Baghdad square; and third, the continuing
>  American pressure to force the partial
> privatization of
>  Iraq's oil, part of which, in Kurdistan, was
> illegally
>  gobbled up in September by Ray Hunt of Hunt Oil,
> one of
>  George W. Bush's Texas chums. Any one of these
> events
>  would have been guaranteed to spark outrage among
> most
>  Iraqis, but taken together they have galvanized
>  nationalism to a degree unprecedented since the
> 2003
>  invasion. All three have been seized on as leverage
> by
>  Iraqi political forces that oppose the
> fifty-four-month
>  occupation of Iraq.
> 
>  The Biden resolution sparked near-apoplectic
> outrage
>  among vast swaths of Iraqis. The Cabinet declared,
> "The
>  Iraqi government categorically rejects the
> resolution."
>  The Iraqi Parliament voted to condemn it. "Iraq is
> not a
>  US property," said a spokesman for the Sunni-led
>  National Dialogue Front. The Association of Muslim
>  Scholars, which calls itself the political arm of
> the
>  Iraqi armed resistance, stated, "The Senate's
> adoption
>  of [the] resolution...is not shocking, because
>  [partitioning the country] was one of the
> objectives
>  behind the invasion of Iraq." Indeed, from Richard
> Perle
>  to David Wurmser, who recently resigned as Vice
>  President Cheney's chief Middle East adviser, the
>  neoconservatives who pushed for the war eagerly
> embraced
>  the notion of redrawing the map of the region, and
> it
>  didn't stop at Iraq's borders.
> 
>  Meanwhile, the Blackwater massacre brought into
> sharp
>  focus what, for Iraqis, has been one of the ugliest
>  parts of the occupation: the arrogant behavior of
> the US
>  diplomatic and military convoys in the streets of
> the
>  capital. At best, these cowboy convoys are a
> painful
>  reminder that the country is occupied, as they set
> up
>  arbitrary roadblocks, speed through oncoming
> traffic in
>  the wrong lanes and routinely smash through stopped
> or
>  parked vehicles. At worst, they engage in criminal
>  assaults against civilians. The most recent
> Blackwater
>  incident crystallized a long-simmering resentment
> that
>  has touched off a showdown between the Iraqi
> government
>  and US authorities. Even subservient Prime Minister
> Nuri
>  al-Maliki declared that Blackwater is "unfit to
> stay in
>  Iraq."
> 
>  The Hunt Oil deal with the Kurds, one of several
> pending
>  oil contracts worth hundreds of millions of
> dollars, may
>  have put the last nail in the coffin of the US
> effort to
>  force Iraq to rewrite its oil laws. Like the Biden
>  resolution and the Blackwater shooting, the Hunt
> deal
>  unleashed pent-up anger among Iraqi Arab leaders,
> who
>  called the deal illegal, since under current Iraqi
> law
>  only the central government in Baghdad, not the
> Kurds,
>  can approve oil deals. The nationalization of
> Iraq's oil
>  in 1972 by Saddam Hussein, after a decades-long
> struggle
>  between Iraq and the Anglo-American oil cartel, was
> a
>  landmark event, the first major oil nationalization
> in
>  the region since the Iranian government of Prime
>  Minister Mohammed Mossadegh took over the British
> oil
>  interests there and, for his efforts, was toppled
> in
>  1953 by a CIA-engineered coup inspired by that
> cartel.
>  In Arab Iraq, if not in Kurdistan, the national oil
>  industry is sacrosanct. If the United States
> intended to
>  confirm Iraqis' belief that the invasion was about
>  grabbing their country's oil, the US effort to open
> up
>  the industry to foreign investors is perfectly
> designed
>  to do so.
> 
>  All of this is roiling Iraqi politics. Across the
>  political spectrum, on both the Sunni and Shiite
> sides
>  of the divide, a nationalist bloc is emerging to
>  challenge the alliance of Kurdish and Shiite
> separatists
>  that has governed Iraq for three years under
> American
>  tutelage. To be sure, such a coalition faces
> enormous
>  obstacles that could stifle it in the cradle.
> First, it
>  would have to overcome the staunch opposition of US
>  occupation forces, still aligned in support of the
>  Maliki government and the Shiite-Kurdish alliance
> that
>  underpins it. Second, thanks to four years of US
>  support, that alliance controls the Iraqi armed
> forces,
>  the Iraqi police, the Interior Ministry and several
>  powerful private armies--including the Badr
> Organization
>  and the Kurdish pesh merga--which will oppose the
> new
>  coalition. And the leaders who are trying to build
>  cross-sectarian ties will have to overcome the
>  entrenched Sunni-Shiite hatreds.
> 
>  Still, the emerging nationalist bloc could get
> enough
>  votes in Parliament to topple Maliki's shaky
> coalition.
>  Its components include two major Shiite factions,
>  Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc and the Fadhila (Virtue)
> Party,
>  which together hold forty-seven seats in
> Parliament; the
>  entire Sunni bloc, led by the Iraqi Accord and the
>  National Dialogue Front, which have fifty-five
> seats;
>  and the secular bloc led by former Prime Minister
> Iyad
>  Allawi, which controls twenty-five seats. In
> addition,
>  say well-placed Iraqi sources, former Prime
> Minister
>  Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Maliki rival in the ruling
> Islamic
>  Dawa Party, has upward of twenty Shiite deputies in
> his
>  camp, and Jaafari is negotiating to be part of the
> new
>  alliance. The addition of Jaafari's bloc would give
> the
>  alliance at least 147 votes, a clear majority in
> the
>  275-member assembly. On September 26 Tariq
> al-Hashimi,
>  the Sunni vice president, announced the formation
> of a
>  National Pact project intended to unify the
> emerging
>  bloc, and he promptly traveled to Najaf to get
> Shiite
>  Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's blessing for the
>  effort. Hashimi's twenty-five-point plan, similar
> to one
>  launched earlier by Allawi, calls for equality for
> all
>  Iraqis, an end to sectarian killing, opposition to
>  foreign interference in Iraq, support for the
> legitimate
>  right of armed resistance and a declaration (aimed
> at Al
>  Qaeda) that "terror is not considered resistance."
> 
>  Outside parliamentary politics, there is much more
>  happening. On the Sunni side, the emergence of the
>  Awakening, a bloc of Sunni tribal leaders, has
> brought a
>  large portion of the former armed resistance into
> Iraqi
>  politics, and they are nearly all fierce
> nationalists.
>  At the same time, a group of twenty-two Iraqi
> resistance
>  groups announced in early October that they had
> formed a
>  coalition led by a former top Baath Party official
> from
>  the Saddam era, Izzat al-Douri, widely recognized
> as the
>  leader of the resistance. Allawi, the former prime
>  minister and a secular Shiite, declared that he had
>  opened political talks with Douri's resistance
> faction.
>  For the first time since 2003, both major parts of
> the
>  resistance--the tribal militias and the former
> Baathists
>  and ex-military officers--are directly engaged in
>  politics in the new Iraq. The Douri faction
> declared its
>  willingness to negotiate a cease-fire with the
> United
>  States, on the condition that Washington declare
> its
>  timetable for leaving Iraq.
> 
>  On the Shiite side, meanwhile, the Sadr faction and
>  Fadhila have emerged as the dominant powers in
> eastern
>  Baghdad and south Iraq, eclipsing the supremacy of
> the
>  Badr Organization, the militia of the Supreme
> Islamic
>  Iraqi Council (SIIC), backed by both Iran and the
> United
>  States (a strange irony, given that SIIC, of all
> the
>  Shiite factions, is closest to Iran). Sadr and
> Fadhila
>  have pulled out of the United Iraqi Alliance, the
> ruling
>  Shiite coalition. If elections were held today,
> Sadr and
>  Fadhila would likely sweep the Shiite-dominated
> parts of
>  Iraq, reducing SIIC and Dawa to mini-parties. Sadr
> has
>  sent envoys to Sunni Arab countries, proposed a
> joint
>  Sunni-Shiite effort to rebuild the Samarra mosque
>  damaged by Al Qaeda bombers, taken part in a Saudi-
>  backed effort in Mecca to create a Sunni-Shiite
> clerical
>  dialogue in Iraq and quietly engaged in talks with
> Sunni
>  and secular factions in Baghdad. Not only that, in
> late
>  August Sadr declared a unilateral six-month truce,
>  ordering his forces to stand down, and, according
> to the
>  Los Angeles Times, he is secretly involved in talks
> with
>  US military officials. It may be too much to hope
> for,
>  but just as the United States finally decided to
> join
>  the Sunni tribal resistance forces rather than
> fight
>  them, it's possible that farsighted US officials
> would
>  be willing to work with Sadr rather than confront
> him,
>  too.
> 
>  If so, the United States will have potential
> partners in
>  both the Sunni and Shiite parts of Iraq who can
> assume
>  control of Iraq when the United States leaves and
> who,
>  so far at least, seem more than willing to talk to
> each
>  other about an arrangement to halt sectarian
> killing and
>  ethnic cleansing. The problem is, both America's
>  newfound Sunni allies and the powerful Sadr-Fadhila
> bloc
>  are united most of all by their opposition to the
> US
>  occupation. (Both the Sunni bloc and Sadr are also
>  united by their opposition to Al Qaeda and to
> Iran's
>  heavy-handed influence in the country.) Earlier
> this
>  year, they united in Parliament on two nationalist
>  bills: the first called for the United States to
> set a
>  timetable for leaving Iraq, and the second demanded
> that
>  the Iraqi government submit for parliamentary
> debate any
>  plan to extend the United Nations mandate for the
> US
>  occupation beyond December, when it expires.
> 
>  The Catch-22 of the American occupation is this:
> Iraqi
>  nationalism is the only political force capable of
>  uniting Sunni and Shiite Arabs and thus putting an
> end
>  to the sectarian civil war, but for the past four
> years
>  the United States has systematically worked to
> suppress
>  nationalism. Instead, beginning with Paul Bremer's
>  Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, the United
>  States deliberately apportioned political posts
> using an
>  ethnic- and sectarian-based formula. Since then, US
>  occupation authorities have favored separatists,
> such as
>  SIIC, which wants a separate Shiite enclave in the
>  south, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the
>  Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which are angling for
> an
>  independent state in Iraq's north. It's no mystery
> why:
>  nationalists would be the least willing to
> accommodate
>  the preferred American goal of an Iraq that is at
> once
>  docile, neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict,
> tolerant
>  of a long-term US presence, willing to serve as a
> base
>  for US military operations in the region and ready
> to
>  hand over their oil wealth to Western investors.
> 
>  _____________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



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