Sunni says US is problem; against faction meet / Anti-Shiite conspiracy, Shiite hotelier says

" 'The problem in Iraq is the American Army,' . . . [Muhammad al-Daini, a Sunni Arab member of the Iraqi Parliament] told a group of attentive American legislators. . . 'What brought terrorism, what brought Al Qaeda and what brought Iranian influence is the Americans.'
Mr. Daini, soft-spoken and generally unsmiling, has been ushered from meeting to meeting by a public relations firm paid by an American businessman who calls the Iraqi politician 'a true humanitarian.' The businessman, Dal LaMagna, says he is devoting the fortune he made selling his high-end grooming tools business, Tweezerman, to seeking an end to the violence in Iraq.
. . . The American lawmakers were polite and inquisitive but some appeared nonplussed by hints of the polarization of Iraqi views. When Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, suggested that it might be valuable to get all Iraqi factions to meet for talks in the United States, Mr. Daini demurred.
. . . Mr. Daini, 35, is a member of the National Dialogue Front, a Sunni Arab political group led by Saleh al-Mutlak, a former Baath Party official who insists that the Baath Party, the party of Saddam Hussein, was the best party ever to govern Iraq." [1]

"Ayad owns a hotel in the southern city of Karbala, home to two of Shiism’s most important shrines. His wife and two daughters wear veils. He believes that the violence in Iraq is a Sunni and American conspiracy against Shiites, and he argues that Iran is the best ally of Iraqi Shiites.
. . . The Sunnis, he said, have 'oppressed us since the days of the Prophet, and now it is our chance to hit back and rule.'
According to Ayad, a Shiite takeover in Iraq would set a good model for the Shiites of Lebanon, where they number about a third of the population, and Bahrain, where they are a majority.
'Perhaps the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia will act too, rid themselves of the Sunni oppression against them, and rule or at least separate themselves from Riyadh and create their own state.'
It is exactly this possibility that has made the Sunni Arab regimes fear a Shiite regional revolt and moved some to support the Sunni insurgency in Iraq or at least to voice their resentment of the Iraqi Shiite government, which is seen as being biased against Iraqi Sunnis.
. . . 'When we fought the Persians during the 1980s, we were wrong. We’re Shiites before being Iraqis. Sunnis invented national identity to rule us.' "

Op-ed by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, "a former reporter for The Daily Star of Lebanon." [2]

Peace thru oppression?

source
[1] Shane, Scott & Wong, Edward. (The New York Times). Antiwar Iraqi in Washington Has a More Sectarian Agenda at Home. May 14, 2007.
[2] Abdul-Hussain, Hussain. (The New York Times). In Iraq, the play was the thing. May 7, 2007.

posted: wednesday, may 16, 2007, 6:14 AM ET
update: wednesday, may 18, 2007, 6:29 PM ET

tags: iraq muhammad al-daini dal lamagna tweezerman saleh al-mutlak

Fadhila to exit Shia bloc, wants to be nonsectarian

"[A] growing number of politicians publicly declared that they embraced the idea of a cross-sectarian political movement that has been gaining strength this week. It was not yet clear the form the front would take, but if successful it would have broad implications for parliamentary divisions and the way government ministries are apportioned: they are currently handed out to parties, most of which have clear sectarian sympathies.
Most significantly, the Fadhila Party, a faction of the united Shiite bloc, the largest group in Parliament, announced it was leaving the bloc.
A spokesman for Fadhila suggested there was frustration with sectarian politics.
'We want to try to build a new politics that is not sectarian that will include all of Iraqi society,' said Bassim Sharif, a leader of the Fadhila party. However, he stopped short of saying that they would join the new bloc. 'For now we will try to work alone to prove there is a Shiite party that can work in a nonsectarian way.' But, he added, 'this is the first step to save Iraq from this crisis.' " [1]

Regarding Fadhila leaving the Shiite bloc, "[o]ne possible scenario in coming weeks would be an alliance between Fadhila and the Iraqi National List, a group led by secular Shiite and former prime minister Ayad Allawi, which has 25 seats.
. . . Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, said he interpreted the move as evidence of growing disapproval of Maliki and the ruling alliance.
"These changes show that neither the Shiite coalition nor the government has been able to improve things and that they are gradually growing weaker," Othman said.
Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni parliament member, said it is too early to tell how the party's withdrawal will alter Iraq's political landscape. But he said the development should be seen as evidence that democracy has taken root in Iraq." [2]

"Shiite parties under the umbrella of the United Iraqi Alliance now hold 113 seats. Kurdish parties have 53 seats and Sunni groups have 44. The remaining 50 members are independent or do not belong to sectarian groupings." [2]

source
[1] Rubin, Alissa. (The New York Times). Attacks on Shiite Pilgrims Continue. March 8, 2007.
[2] Londono, Ernesto. (The Washington Post). Shiite Bloc in Parliament Diminished by Defection. March 8, 2007.

posted: monday, march 12, 2007, 4:50 AM ET

tags: iraq fadhila

Sadr's redeployment plan not covered enough / Is war for U.S. almost over?

"The parliamentary bloc of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced an end to a boycott that has kept Iraq's young National Assembly semi-paralyzed for two months. *
The Sadr bloc returned to the assembly after a parliamentary committee and the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, agreed to a series of demands, said Falah Hasan Shenshel, a member of the Sadr bloc.
The demands included establishing a timetable for the buildup of Iraqi troops and the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and a condition that the presence of foreign troops would not be extended without a vote by the assembly, Shenshel said. U.S. troops should retreat from Iraqi cities and return to their bases by the end of August, he said.
'By doing so, America would confirm that it came to Iraq as a liberator and not as an occupier,' Shenshel said.
Sadr's movement has 30 seats in the 275-member parliament, and his political loyalists have called for a prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops. He is widely regarded as a focal instigator of the sectarian violence that has ravaged the country in recent months." [1]

Why isn't this a bigger story? If the U.S. troops will be exiting the cities and staying at their bases, they'll probably be out of most of the danger.

(This sounds more like a proposal for a law that still needs to be voted on by the Parliament, but with Sadr, a committee and the Speaker agreeing to it, it sounds like it has a legitimate chance at passing. A recent New York Times article said that "deals on important legislation, most recently the oil law, now take place largely out of public view, with Parliament - when it meets - rubber-stamping the final decisions." [2] So its eventual passage seems even more likely, though they're still working on the oil law.)

The NYT article also said that "security is almost exclusively the policy realm of the American military and the office of the prime minister." [2] But the Iraqi Constitution says that one of the powers of Parliament (aka The Council of Representatives) is "monitoring the performance of the executive authority" (Article 60, second). The Prime Minister, who is described as being "responsible for the general policy of the State and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces," is included in the executive authority (Article 77). The Constitution also says that "a law shall regulate the work of the security institutions . . . and be subject to the oversight of the Council of Representatives" (Article 83, first). So it seems that the Parliament has definite oversight powers over the Prime Minister and his policies and over the security institutions, but the Constitution, unfortunately, does not say what these powers are. [3]

Also, I'm not certain whether the United States military operating within Iraq is the exclusive domain of the Prime Minister (though it could be.) While the Prime Minister is the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces, the U.S. military is not part of the Iraqi armed forces, so the Parliament, whose powers also includes "enacting federal laws" (Article 60, first), might also have the legal authority to create the policy of what role the U.S. military can maintain in Iraq. [3]

At the very least, Sadr's proposed redeployment law seems no less than the U.S. Congress's proposed non-binding resolutions opposing an increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq which are receiving much attention in the press and by other influential parties.

And also, does the part of Sadr's proposed law about the presence of foreign troops not being extended mean just their presence in Iraqi cities or in Iraq entirely? More details are needed.

The Iraqis also seem to be taking matters into their own hands. Aren't redeployment and the Iraqis taking control what many of the anti-war people want? Is much or most of America's military involvement in the war about to end and nobody wants to say anything? (Iraq could conceivably ask America to stay beyond the deadline, but that possibility seems to be part of many of the anti-war people's plan also.)

Gen. Casey also said recently that the surge troops could begin withdrawing by "late summer" if the people of Baghdad were feeling safer. [4]

Casey's "late summer" and Shenshel's "end of August" sound like about the same time. Shenshel's plan sounds broader and more specific than Casey's, but with 80% of the violence apparently occurring within 30 miles of Baghdad [5], they seem similar. The insurgent-terrorist violence might still be an issue, however, at least from the American point-of-view.

footnotes
* It's been implied or I've been interpreting that Sadr's bloc of 30 representatives boycotting Parliament had been preventing a quorum from being gathered and thus laws from being passed. (see boycott posting, 1/21/06.) But a quorum requires only "50 percent plus one" of Iraq's 275 member Parliament. [2] So Sadr's 30 boycotting representatives, by themselves, fell far short of the 138 representatives it would have taken to mathematically prevent a quorum. Other representatives may have joined the boycott, but this was not made clear or I may have missed that part.

* Since this was originally posted, Gen. Casey's successor, Gen. David Petraeus, has said that the troop increase will 'need to be sustained, certainly for some time well beyond the summer.' [6]

source
[1] The Washington Post. Disguises Used in Attack on Troops. January 22, 2007.
[2] Cave, Damien. (nytimes.com). January 24, 2007. Iraq Parliament Finds a Quorum Hard to Come By.
[3] Iraqi Constitution. (iraqigovernment.org). Accessed January 26, 2007.
[4] The New York Times. General Sees Summer Deadline for Troops. January 20, 2007.
[5] The White House. President's Address to the Nation. January 10, 2007.
[6] Baker, Peter. (The Washington Post). Additional Troop Increase Approved. March 11, 2007.

related posting
Is Iraq getting ready to ask America to leave? December 23, 2006.

posted: tuesday, january 23, 2007, 5:38 PM ET
update: tuesday, march 13, 2007, 8:45 PM ET

tags: iraq bush sadr withdrawal redeployment