5/7/06:IRAQI RESISTANCE DISMISS MALIKI PEACE OFFER(GLW/FWD)
- From: uneoo@xxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 6 Jul 2006 04:34:57 +1100
GREENLEFT WEEKLY AUSTRALIA, 5-JUL-2006
www.greenleft.org.au
IRAQ: RESISTANCE GROUPS REJECT "OLIVE BRANCH"
Doug Lorimer
On June 25, the US-backed Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al Maliki,
announced before the Iraqi parliament a 24-point national
reconciliation plan, ostensibly an olive branch to Iraqi resistance
fighters. At a Baghdad press conference held later that day, US
ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called the plan a good step to mend Iraq's
wounds, adding: "I urge all insurgents to lay down their arms and join
the political and democratic process in the new Iraq.
In the days before the plan was made public, it was widely reported
that it would offer an amnesty to resistance fighters who had not
engaged in deliberate attacks on Iraqi civilians. On June 24, for
example, Newsweek magazine reported that it had obtained a draft of
the plan, and verified its contents with two Iraqi officials involved
in the reconciliation process who declined to be identified because of
the sensitivity of the plan's contents.
The magazine reported that the draft follows a series of secret
negotiations over the past two months between seven insurgent groups,
President Jalal Talabani and officials of the US embassy. The
insurgent groups involved are Sunnis but do not include foreign
jihadis like al Qaeda and other terrorist factions who deliberately
target civilians ...
The distinction between insurgents and terrorists is one of the key
principles in the document, and is in response to Sunni politicians
demands that the 'national resistance should not be punished for what
they see as legitimate self-defense in attacks against a foreign
occupying power.
According to Newsweek, the draft called for a timetable for the
withdrawal of US and other foreign troops and granted amnesty to
insurgents who have attacked and killed American soldiers and the
release of all security detainees being held without charges in the
country, estimated at as many as 14,000.
However, the plan made public by Maliki did not include any of these
proposals. The June 25 New York Times reported that Maliki's plan,
intended to reduce insurgent attacks through dialogue and amnesty, was
weeks in the making, with all of Iraq's religious and ethnic political
blocs participating. But Maliki opted for a version that did not stake
out any new ground, simply repackaging previous pronouncements
instead. The decision appeared to have been influenced by religious
Shiites who form his base and by the US military command.
A government pardon -- which Sunni Arab leaders have called for in the
case of [suspected] Iraqi resistance fighters who oppose the US
occupation -- will apply, Maliki said in a speech to parliament, only
to detainees who 'were not involved in criminal or terrorist
activities.
The article reported: 'How can you call this amnesty? said Sadoon
al-Zubaidy, a Sunni Arab from the former Parliament. 'We're talking
about releasing people who are either proven innocent or who have not
been charged with anything. We have a twisted kind of logic here.
Muthanna Harith al Dari, a spokesperson for the influential Sunni
Association of Muslim Scholars, which has supported the patriotic
Iraqi resistance since 2003, told Aljazeera TV in a June 26 interview
that Maliki's plan was different from what the AMS had expected,
insisting that the original plan had been altered under pressure from
US officials.
That same day, Time magazine's website ran an analysis of the plan
that noted that while many Iraqi politicians have distinguished
between terrorism (attacks targeting Iraqi civilians) and resistance
(attacks against the US and allied armies), the paragraph that
Newsweek had reported was in the original draft distinguishing between
terrorism and national resistance had been deleted in the final hours
of negotiation before the plan was announced.
Time observed that the objective of Maliki's 'national unity policy,
strongly backed by US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, involves trying to
draw the Sunnis, including some mainstream insurgent groups, into the
political process. (Though the Al Qaeda in Iraq element grabs much of
the media attention, it accounts for no more than about 10% of the
insurgency.) ... But unless the bulk of the insurgents who are
mounting most of the daily attacks on Coalition forces are offered a
path back into Iraq's political life on terms supported by their
community, there's little chance of the new government succeeding
where its predecessors have failed.
In its last quarterly update on the Iraq war to the US Congress on May
30, the Pentagon reported that from February 11 to May 12, Iraqi
guerrillas had staged an average of 600 attacks per week. John Bolton,
US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council on March 15 that
almost 80% of all attacks are directed against coalition forces.
In a study released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies in April, Nawaf Obaid, a security consultant to
the pro-US Saudi Arabian government, estimated that there are 77,000
fighters in the insurgency drawing upon hundreds of thousands of
direct and indirect supporters within Iraqs Sunni Arab
population. Obaids study was based on Saudi intelligence reports.
According to senior Iraqi tribal leaders, Obaid wrote, the insurgency
is orchestrated mainly by former commanders and high-level military
officers from the former Baathist regime, combined with a sizable
number of mid-level officers.
The vast majority of these commanders are secular nationalists who
derive from Iraq's former military services, including both commanders
and soldiers from the Republican Guard, and the disbanded Iraqi Army
and intelligence services.
Another portion of the 'secular insurgency comprises former officials
of the Baath party, although they are much smaller and lack the
infrastructure of the officer corps. Recently, their strength has
further diminished due to internal divisions and lack of funding
(which has since been diverted to the officer corps).
On June 26, Associated Press reported that seven insurgent groups have
contacted the [Maliki] government to declare their readiness to join
in efforts at national reconciliation ... The seven lesser groups,
most of them believed populated by former members or backers of Saddam
Hussein's government, military or security agencies, have said they
want a truce, said Hassan al-Suneid, a legislator and member of the
political bureau of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki's [Shiite Islamist]
Dawa Party.
The previous day's London Sunday Times had reported that a senior
commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups had told it
that those involved in the negotiations with Maliki's government were
small groups both in numbers and military power, easy to reach because
of the simplicity of their hierarchy and unable to sustain a long-term
military confrontation for lack of finances, numbers and logistics.
The Sunday Times also reported that Iraqs main insurgent groups
intended to reject Maliki's plan and present their own demands: They
want a rapid withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of all
prisoners from American and Iraqi jails and compensation from the
United States and other coalition countries to fund the rebuilding of
infrastructure and homes destroyed in the war ...
The paper reported that representatives of 11 rebel groups have
indicated that any future talks should be conducted with American
officials under UN or Arab League supervision, but not with Maliki s
government, which they regard as an illegitimate creation of the
US-led occupation forces.
AP reported on June 28 that eleven Sunni insurgent groups had offered
a truce on the condition that Washington committed to withdrawing all
its troops from Iraq within two years.
The Mujahideen Shura Council -- an umbrella organisation of
al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups in Iraq -- issued a statement on June
26 rejecting any negotiations with either the Maliki government or the
US. The statement denounced Maliki's reconciliation plan as a
malicious project aimed at salvaging his crusader masters and their
apostate lackeys, the aim of which was to evade the mujahadeen [holy
warriors], especially the mujahadeen groups that have a clear doctrine
of denouncing the unbelieving devil and its new religion, democracy.
From Green Left Weekly, July 5, 2006.Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
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