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roachboy · 06-08-2005, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Iraqi Leaders Take a Divisive Step by Backing Shiite Militia
By EDWARD WONG
Published: June 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 - In a move certain to further inflame sectarian tensions with Sunni Arabs, the country's top leaders said today that they strongly supported the existence of an Iranian-trained Shiite militia and praised the militia's role in trying to secure the country.

It was the first time the new Iraqi government has publicly backed an armed group that was created along sectarian lines, and it was an implicit rejection of repeated requests by American officials that the government disband all militias in the country.

The widening sectarian rift was further underscored today when top Sunni Arab leaders demanded that a 55-member constitutional committee dominated by Shiites and Kurds add at least 25 Sunni seats to the committee. The Sunnis said they wanted those seats to have full membership powers.

In recent days, Shiite committee members have proposed adding 12 to 15 non-voting seats to the committee for Sunnis.

Violence from the Sunni-led insurgency continued, as the American military announced on today that four soldiers had died from various attacks in northern Iraq today and Tuesday. A car bomb exploded in a line of drivers outside a gas station in the city of Baquba, killing three people and wounding one, an Interior Ministry official said.

Two bodyguards of a National Assembly member were gunned down in Baghdad, a police officer was killed in the capital and another was assassinated in Mosul, the official said.

The remarks supporting the Shiite militia were made in the morning at an unusual news conference whose speakers included Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi prime minister and a Shiite Arab; Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president and a militia leader himself, and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite political party that created the Shiite militia, known as the Badr Organization.

In recent weeks, some Sunni Arab leaders have vociferously blamed the Badr militia for the murders of prominent Sunni clerics and others. Among the Badr's harshest critics is Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

Indeed, from the time the Badr militia entered Iraq from Iran during the American-led invasion, Sunnis have blamed Badr fighters for assassinations across the country, especially the killings of former Baath Party officials.

The joint appearance of Mr. Talabani and the Shiite leaders indicated that Shiite and Kurdish leaders seemed willing to endorse the existence of each group's militias. The two main Kurdish parties together have the strongest militia in the country, a force that totals 100,000 fighters and is known as the pesh merga, or "those who face death." In negotiations with the Shiites to assemble the current government, Kurdish leaders argued vehemently that the Kurds, as part of their right to broad autonomy, must be allowed to keep the pesh merga intact.

The issue was expected to be raised again during the drafting of the new constitution, but Mr. Talabani's support of the Badr Organization appears to show that the Kurds and Shiites have reached some sort of understanding that their respective militias should continue to exist.

"You and the pesh merga are wanted and are important to fulfilling this sacred task, to establishing a democratic, federal and independent Iraq," Mr. Talabani said, addressing the Badr.

Mr. Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI, said: "Badr represents all Iraqis; it represents the wide spectrum of Iraqis and has a wide base in Iraq."

The Badr Organization, originally called the Badr Brigade, was founded in the 1980's while SCIRI was in exile in Iran, and it received training from the Iranian military. Mr. Hakim was appointed its leader by his older brother and SCIRI's founder, Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim. When the elder Hakim was killed with scores of followers in a suicide car bombing in Najaf in August 2003, his brother took charge of the entire SCIRI organization.

In the summer of 2003, the Badr Brigade changed its name because American officials with the Coalition Provisional Authority were urging the dissolution of all militia. The Badr's leaders publicly claimed it had transformed into a purely humanitarian organization, but said repeatedly in interviews that the Badr was still armed and was active in cities across Iraq, particularly in the Shiite heartland of the south.

The militia numbers in the tens of thousands, and American officials now privately acknowledge that they have failed to disband any of the country's major militias.

When asked about the continuing existence of the militias, American military commanders refer reporters to the Iraqi government, saying the issue is now in the hands of leaders like Dr. Jaafari, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Hakim. The commanders say they cannot give orders to a sovereign Iraq, even if the existence of the militias increases the possibility of large-scale civil war.

One of the toughest issues for the new government is how to lessen the deep-seated feelings of disenfranchisement among the former ruling Sunni Arabs. The Sunnis largely boycotted the January elections and are effectively shut out of the political process. Shiite and Kurdish leaders, at the urging of the White House, are trying to bring in more Sunnis, especially into the process of drafting the permanent constitution, whose first draft is due by August 15.

Sunni Arab leaders met in Baghdad today and concluded that they wanted at least 25 seats on the 55-member committee of the National Assembly assigned to draft the constitution. There are now two Sunni Arabs on the Shiite-dominated committee. The committee will likely be resistant to the demands of the Sunnis, since there are only 15 Kurds on the committee. Sunni Arabs and Kurds each make up roughly a fifth of the Iraqi population.

Alaa Meki, an official in the Iraqi Islamic Party, a powerful Sunni group, said in an interview that the Sunni leaders were ready to submit 25 names to the committee to be accepted as "full members, not as advisers."

One problem facing the Iraqi government is that unlike the Shiites, the Sunni Arabs do not have a unified leadership. Several rival Sunni movements have been negotiating with American and Iraqi officials over the Sunni role in politics and the constitutional process. The meeting of Sunnis today did not include the National Dialogue Council, a group that is competing with the Iraqi Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars Association.

The International Crisis Group, a prominent conflict-resolution organization, released a study today saying that the National Assembly should invoke the one-time option of a six-month delay on the writing of the constitution partly to make the process more participatory. The assembly should then lay out a detailed and realistic timetable for completing the first draft, the study said.

It also urged the Bush administration to top pushing the Iraqis to meet the original deadline of August 15. American officials have said they intend to keep on track the writing of the constitution and elections for a five-year government, scheduled for December.

Joost R. Hiltermann, the report's author and a recent visitor to Iraq, said in an e-mail message that the haggling over Sunni positions on the committee "could go on for a while" and is "all the more reason to postpone, but only with a detailed timetable."

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/in...rtner=homepage

things grow curiouser and curiouser.

there have been concerns surfacing in various sectors--not entirely within, not entirely without the press pool--that iraq could be sliding into civil war. i do not pretend to know much for certain about this, but the moves outlined in the above article cannot help matters.

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by the way, this is an excellent source for information on iraq:

http://www.iwpr.net/iraq_index1.html

i'd have posted this earlier but i forgot about the site altogether.

this link is to the index page for analyses of iraq from this month
at the bottom of the page is a small link to the index: once you find it, things are a bit confusing at first, but you'll figure it out.

if you look here:

http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?iraq_ipm_index.html

you land on the index for a daily summary of what is being reported in iraqi newspapers. which is interesting.

there are other options as well--cruise around.

also, check out the homepage as well for links to other areas of iwpr coverage, which include afghanistan, central asia and the balkans.