Iraq seeks own course to heal wounds of occupation
Iraq seeks own course to heal wounds of occupation
Alistair Lyon, Reuters, Baghdad
Iraq's interim government, which assumed sovereignty on Monday,
promises a bold strategy of toughness and reconciliation to halt
bloodshed and heal the wounds of U.S.-led occupation.
Success will require tightrope skills from Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, 58, who once plotted against Saddam Hussein from exile
with dissident Baathists, army officers and Western spies.
A U.S.-led multinational force of more than 160,000 troops is
staying on despite the official end of occupation.
But Allawi must convince Iraqis they are no longer under
foreign occupiers -- as almost all Iraqis now view the U.S. and
British troops who rid them of Saddam's brutal rule last year.
Washington and London, which went to war on a fruitless quest
for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, tout Saddam's overthrow
and a plan for democratic rule as their main gains.
For Iraqis, relief at Saddam's demise has long given way to
dismay at the insecurity, lawlessness and bloodshed gripping
their land. Most blame the Americans for the havoc.
The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, symbol of the
humiliation of occupation, shredded U.S. credibility in the minds
of many Iraqis who already suspected U.S. motives for the war and
shared Arab anger at Washington's support for Israel.
Now they are desperate for security, fearful of civil war and
eager for jobs, functioning services and a better life. As for
democracy and human rights, those may have to wait.
Allawi, whose government's UN-mandated task is to prepare for
elections due by January, says the polls might have to be put off
for a month or two if insecurity still prevails.
He has talked of imposing emergency law in parts of Iraq,
though given the weakness of Iraq's fledgling security forces and
the human rights safeguards in an interim constitution, enforcing
this may fall to the multinational force. This has UN authority
to take "all necessary measures" for security.
But anti-U.S. insurgents, foreign Muslim militants and armed
criminals have defied the U.S. military for months and only a
political strategy can defuse the violence.
Allawi has the beginnings of one.
He wants to unite Iraqis against foreign Islamist militants
and al-Qaeda allies like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have filtered
into Iraq since the war to pursue an anti-American jihad.
Even Iraqis who once shrugged off suicide car bombings as an
inevitable part of the struggle against occupation are now
enraged by the toll they inflict on Iraqi police and civilians.
Allawi will offer an amnesty for Iraqis who fought the
occupation out of righteous anger, a category the U.S. military
has never distinguished from other "anti-Iraq forces".
"The government will make a clear distinction between those
Iraqis who have acted against the occupation out of a sense of
desperation, and those foreign terrorist fundamentalists and
criminals whose sole objective is to kill and maim innocent
people and to see Iraq fail," Allawi has stated.
The Bush administration, keen to staunch the flow of bad news
from Iraq before the November presidential election and
eventually to extract U.S. troops, is unlikely to object.
It has also swallowed Allawi's criticism of last year's U.S.
decision to disband Saddam's military and security apparatus, and
has endorsed his plans to recruit more former Baathist officers
to join the forces now being rebuilt.
"The honor of decent Iraqi ex-officials, including military
and police, should be restored, excluding of course those who
committed heinous crimes against the nation," Allawi has said.
His words reflect another goal -- to persuade Iraq's once-
dominant Sunni minority that it need not feel excluded or resort
to violence to achieve influence in the future.
At the same time, Allawi cannot afford to alienate his own
majority Shiite community, long oppressed by Saddam and now
anxious to match its numerical strength with political power.
He must appeal to Iraqi, rather than Arab, nationalism if he
is not to upset the Kurds, bent on consolidating their autonomous
region in the north and even expanding it to include the
volatile, oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.
Allawi can enhance his credibility with Iraqis by showing he
is no American puppet, but this is no easy task while Iraq still
needs U.S. forces and US$18 billion of promised U.S. aid.
He is also constrained by a host of hard-to-alter decrees, new
institutions and long-term appointments reflecting an effort by
outgoing U.S. administrator Paul Bremer to implant ideals of
liberal economics, governance and checks on central authority.
"It's a balancing act, but I think Allawi has the judgment and
the political skill to do it," said David Richmond, Britain's
outgoing special representative to Iraq.
His predecessor, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, has painted a harsh
picture of Iraq's future if the violence is unchecked. "The
worst-case scenario is an implosion of Iraqi security and society
down to levels lower than the unified state...perhaps back to the
mediaeval picture of local baronies," he said.
Allawi can take comfort from signs that even some hardened
Iraqi foes of the occupation are distancing themselves from
Zarqawi militants who have beheaded foreigners, killed hundreds
of Iraqis in bomb attacks and sabotaged oil facilities.
Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who called off his
Mehdi Army's revolt after it lost hundreds of dead in battles
with U.S. forces, last week spoke out against "terrorists and
saboteurs" and urged his men to protect their likely targets.
In Falluja, after three U.S. air raids destroyed suspected
Zarqawi safe houses, Sunni fighters denied the militant was in
the town or that they had made common cause with him.
Iraq today is a grim world away from the smooth path to
reconstruction and democracy that proponents of the Iraq war
predicted would inspire change across the Middle East.
U.S. President George Bush still upholds this vision and says
America will stay in Iraq until the job is done.