19 January 2010 By Dahr Jamail
With all attention on Afghanistan as violence and US
troop commitment there surges, the occupation in Iraq
has received less attention in recent months than it
has since the invasion of Iraq took place in March
2003. However, national elections in
Iraq, originally scheduled to take place this month,
but postponed until March 7, rather than possibly
bringing greater stability to war-torn Iraq, now
threaten to reignite a powder keg of political
tensions that has been simmering for years. Last week, the Shiite-sectarian
political power brokers in Baghdad, led by
US-appointed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, used the
so-called Iraq Accountability and Justice Commission (AJC),
(a remnant group of the former De-Baathification
Commission set up by L. Paul Bremer, the US czar of
Iraq during the first year of the occupation and led
by Ahmed Chalabi), on January 7 to ban at least 14
largely Sunni political parties and political figures
from the upcoming vote due to supposed links to the
Baath Party, which has long since been banned in Iraq. The AJC claims that its decision
was based on new “evidence” showing connections
between the 14 groups and the Baath Party, but has
thus far failed to produce any said evidence. On January 5, the Saudi-owned
London-based daily newspaper Al-Hayat wrote of this:
“The independent Iraqi Election Commission has
revealed that it has received an interpretation from
the Iraqi Supreme Federal Court in regard to the
seventh article of the constitution, which prohibits
Ba’thist participation in all elections and also the
participation of any Ba’th allies or supporters in any
political activity. It is important to note that this
decision could lead to the exclusion of fourteen
political parties and groups from the electoral
process.” The commission’s president Faraj
al-Haydari was quoted in that regard by Al-Hayat as
saying: “We have received the Federal Court’s
interpretation regarding some political entities which
were first included in the electoral process but will
be excluded from the process altogether in light of
this recent court decision. The Federal Court
considered that any politician or party involved in
terrorist activities, or enjoying Ba’thist ideas, must
be excluded. This decision considers that, based on
Article 7 of the constitution, these people should be
excluded from any political participation and from
public life.” The most important figure banned,
thus far, was Saley al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni leader,
whose National Dialogue Front is very popular among
Iraq’s largely disenfranchised Sunni population.
Mutlaq was likely targeted by Maliki in this
pre-emptive political assassination attempt because in
recent months he has effectively created a powerful
bloc of opposition that would challenge both Maliki
and the broader Shiite political alliance to which he
belongs, which is comprised of the likes of Muqtada
al-Sadr’s group, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq,
and Chalabi. While Iraq’s government still
could, theoretically, decide to void the
aforementioned ban, the move has created outrage
across Iraq, threatened to reignite sectarian violence
and civil war that ravaged the country throughout
2006-2007, and would inevitably cause the more than
120,000 US troops in Iraq to, rather than see their
numbers decline, remain and possibly increase. Mutlaq’s political bloc, which
includes former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and
the prominent Sunni leader Tariq al-Hashemi, is now
threatening to boycott the March election, as Reuters
reported on January 9: Likely in response to Mutlaq’s
threat of boycott, and to use fear to consolidate
power, on January 12, Iraqis in Baghdad awoke to find
their capital city locked down and streets sealed off,
with rumors flying that there had been a Baathist
coup. With a Sunni and secular-Shia
political boycott of the March elections, and the
ensuing lack of political representation in Baghdad,
the threat of large-scale violence looms large. President Barack Obama’s current
stated promise is to draw down US forces in Iraq to
around 50,000 by this August, and remove those forces
by the end of 2011 (with the usually unstated caveat
that at least 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq
indefinitely). This appears very unlikely even without
a large boycott of the upcoming vote and the likely
violence that would explode as a result, as the
current Obama plan would, since US forces are expected
to remain above 120,000 until after the elections,
mean that at least 70,000 troops would be withdrawn in
only five months. Meanwhile, evidence of further
political turmoil arose on January 12 when Iraqi
Speaker Ayad al-Samarraie, told the newspaper Asharq
al-Awsat, “I can also tell you that our efforts
[toward government accountability] were met with
opposition from the government, which did not like
having someone watching over its head. They thought
that we were practicing our prerogatives in order to
topple the government and bring it down, which is, of
course, not true at all. We wanted to fight
corruption, but our efforts were met with anger and
rejection from a significant number of ministers. They
refused to come to parliament for questioning,
thinking that was a humiliation for them.” Al-Samarraie said this about the
government response to his anti-corruption efforts:
“If the prime minister has something on his mind, let
him express it, but the final decision belongs to the
parliamentary blocs. I told the prime minister on many
occasions that, if you strongly believe in something,
let your parliamentary bloc work to implement it. But,
if your bloc is not up to the task, do not blame me
for that,” and added that the government, particularly
Prime Minister Maliki, wants “… the speaker to be
powerless, but that will not be the case. We are not
in a dictatorial regime and I will never be a
figurehead. Many attempts were made to topple me, but
they have all failed.” A statement by the head of the
European Parliament’s delegation for relations with
Iraq, Scottish lawmaker Struan Stevenson, cited
Mutlaq’s “uncompromising positions” against Iran’s
“meddling” in Iraq as the “true” reason behind the
decision to ban him from the upcoming election. In another move, in response to
charges of sectarianism in banning political groups
and individuals from the March 7 vote who have alleged
ties to the banned Sunni party, the commission said it
also intends to ban Shiite opposition parties that are
affiliated with the Sunni parties that are accused of
Baathist affiliations. It is important to note that Maliki
was an Iraqi in exile in Tehran from 1982-1990, then
remained in Syria before returning to Iraq after the
US invasion of 2003. Maliki, who is also the secretary
general of the Islamic Dawa Party, worked as a
political officer for the Dawa while in Syria,
developing close ties with Hezbollah and Iran. Maliki’s government has also been
busy recently conducting mass arrests of hundreds of
young men in predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq. While
the vast majority of Iraqis are nonsectarian, the
US-backed government in Baghdad continues to carry out
acts that blatantly foment violent sectarianism,
evidenced by the article “Mass Arrests Reported in
Sunni Areas in Iraq” in the Azzaman newspaper on
January 4 that stated: “Iraqi security forces have
launched a wide campaign in Sunni Muslim-dominated
neighborhoods of Baghdad and towns and cities to the
north and west of the capital” and “the campaign is
said to be the widest by the government in years and
has led to an exodus of people to the Kurdish north.” Those arrested have been accused of
illegal membership in the Awakening Council. Family members of those being
arrested are not told where their loved ones are being
held, only that those arrested will remain behind bars
until after the elections. In addition, there have
been government sweeps collecting other members of the
once US-backed Awakening Council, a group of nearly
200,000 Sunni militiamen, who the US paid off to stop
their attacks against occupation forces, but have
since been cut free of US support, at least
officially. The Councils were originally
founded by the Bush administration to help combat
al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Judicial Council, that is run
by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, last week passed 77 death
sentences in Baghdad, all targeting men accused of
terrorism, mostly from the Sunni community. Maliki’s clampdown on the Sunnis
also happens to coincide with the recent release of
Qais Khazali, a popular Shiite cleric who was jailed
in March 2007. Khazali was an associate of Muqtada al-Sadr,
but was expelled from Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia in
2004. It is believed Khazali will be used by Maliki in
the March vote to counterbalance the Sadrist bloc that
is now running for Parliament in March in a coalition
that does not include Maliki. Maliki’s recent targeting of his
Sunni and secular Shiite political opponents likely
stems from an attempt to salvage what he can of his
deteriorating political power. With violence again
escalating in Iraq with recent widespread bombings,
Maliki has also lost face on the Iraqi street, as his
reputation of having improved security in Iraq is now
stained with Iraqi blood. Maliki’s political bloc, the State
of Law Alliance (SoL), which had the support of the
majority of Sunnis during Iraq’s provincial elections
in January 2009, has now effectively lost that support
by these recent clampdowns on the Awakening Council
and Sunni politicians like Mutlaq. Mutlaq has vowed to seek to
overturn the decision through the country’s Supreme
Court or, if necessary, the United Nations. If he fails, and a Sunni and
secular Shia boycott of the March 7 vote happens, a
growing fear of major resumption of armed resistance
activities looms large. Comments 💬 التعليقات |