[Mb-civic] Melting pot of blood

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Melting pot of blood

     With the insurgency boiling over and sectarian
     strife spreading, ethnic divisions threaten to
     derail the new Iraqi government.

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By Juan Cole
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/06/ethnic/print.html

May 6, 2005  |  Iraq's elected Parliament finally swore
in a new Cabinet on Tuesday -- yet another milestone
that the Bush administration hoped would represent a
decisive turning point in its campaign to remake Iraq.
But like the toppling of Saddam's statue, the dictator's
capture, the formation of an interim government, the
siege of Fallujah, the national elections, and the
formation of a new government, this latest development
offered little reason for hope that the bloody
insurrection would subside.

Years ago, George Bush the elder explained why he did
not push on to Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War:
He feared the breakup of the Iraqi state. The most
dangerous fissure was and is between Iraq's majority
group, the Shiites, and the formerly ascendant Sunnis.
Those divisions have now exploded into a horrific
guerrilla war in which disaffected Sunnis increasingly
target Shiites and Kurds. In the week after the Cabinet
was presented to Parliament, Sunni Arab guerrillas went
on a bombing spree that left some 200 dead and hundreds
more wounded. The Bush administration had hoped that the
new, elected government would attract the loyalty of
alienated Iraqis, and that as a result the guerrilla war
would wind down. Instead, Sunnis are furious that their
representation on the Cabinet is still unclear and that
their suggestions for Cabinet members have been rejected
by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

The massive suicide bombing that killed 60 and wounded
150 at a police recruitment station in Irbil Wednesday
morning was only one of a string of deadly assaults
signaling the resolve of the Sunni Arab guerrillas to
keep fighting. While some of the attacks were carried
out by fundamentalist holy warriors ("jihadis"), the
bulk are probably the work of Baath military men. A Col.
Zajay, a Shiite police official in south Baghdad, told
the London Times last week, "We have lots of information
that the Baathists are regrouping ... They think they
can take power again."

President Bush, as usual, tried to put the best possible
light on the situation, saying in his April 28 news
conference that he believes "we're making really good
progress in Iraq" and praising the new government for
exemplifying "unity in diversity." Many Iraqis, shell-
shocked by the bloody attacks and the unraveling of the
Iraqi social fabric, begged to differ. In addition to
the massive bombing campaign that greeted the formation
of the new government, sectarian strife continued in the
mixed Sunni-Shiite areas south of Baghdad. In another
alarming development, major rioting broke out Tuesday
and Wednesday at Baghdad University between Shiite and
Sunni students and professors.

When the Cabinet was presented to Parliament on April
28, only 185 members (out of 274) showed up to vote it
into office, and Sunni Arab officials were clearly
frustrated and disappointed that so many key posts
reserved for Sunnis had not yet been filled. Eleven
small Sunni parties had formed a National Dialogue
Council to negotiate with Jaafari and to put forward
candidates for positions. The Sunnis had demanded seven
ministries, including the powerful post of minister of
defense. But only a few of the ministries allotted to
the Sunni Arabs were filled by Prime Minister Jaafari
before he took the Cabinet to Parliament. Sunni Arabs
expected to get defense, human rights, and industry and
minerals, but those posts were filled by acting
ministers.

Among the major Sunni Arab players, the rotund Vice
President Ghazi al-Yawer called the new Cabinet, with
its holes where Sunnis should be, "disappointing" and
"sectarian." An official of the Iraqi Islamic Party said
that the Cabinet did not represent Iraq and therefore
could not usher in national reconciliation. He
complained of its "racist" character. He said that all
of the candidates suggested by his party for Cabinet
posts had been rejected.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard-line Sunni
group with extensive ties to the guerrillas, responded
to the Cabinet by saying that there is no hope of peace
in Iraq until the United States withdraws its forces. In
his Friday prayers sermon at the Umm al-Qura mosque in
west Baghdad, Shaikh Hareth al-Ubaidi criticized the new
government of Ibrahim Jaafari as having "marginalized
the Sunnis." He also ridiculed the talk that a Sunni
Arab would be appointed "minister of tourism."

Sunni Arabs constitute about 4 million of Iraq's
population of 25 million and predominate in Baghdad and
its western and northern hinterlands. They had been the
elite of the country in the 20th century, and they
dominated the upper reaches of the civilian bureaucracy
and the officer corps, as well as being large landlords
and entrepreneurs. Under Saddam Hussein, the Baath Party
became an important source of wealth and patronage for
Sunni Arabs, the top leadership of which kept Kurds and
the majority Shiites politically marginalized.

The new government was seen as a threat by the guerrilla
movement, which indulged in an orgy of bloodletting. On
Friday, as April ended, guerrillas detonated four bombs
in the relatively well-off and famously pious Sunni
quarter of Azamiyah in the capital, killing 20. They
also struck in Madaen, where they used the technique of
setting an explosion to attract police and Iraqi army
troops, and then detonating more bombs when the police
and military arrived, killing 13. Altogether, guerrillas
killed 50 and wounded 114. They struck again on
Saturday, setting off five bombs in Baghdad that killed
11 and wounded 40. They also targeted a building
belonging to the National Dialogue Council in a bid to
make it stop negotiating with others.

On Sunday, the guerrillas set off five bombs in Baghdad,
killing six and wounding 40. But they also attempted to
demonstrate their range, striking at a funeral for a
slain Kurdish official in the northern city of Telafar.
They killed 30 and wounded 50, mainly northern Kurds. On
Monday they were at it again, killing 29. Then after a
lighter day on Tuesday, they hit Irbil. The constant
violence, much of it targeting Shiites or Kurds, refuses
to subside.

Frantic negotiations between Jaafari and the Sunni Arabs
attempting to make a deal led to an expectation that
when the smoke cleared on Tuesday, Jaafari would have a
complete Cabinet and would have the Sunni Arabs aboard.
Negotiations appear to have broken down, however,
because the Sunnis presented as candidates persons who
were too close to the Baath Party. Vice President al-
Yawer sullenly boycotted the festivities, as did most
other Sunni Arab movers and shakers. The Associated
Press quoted Mishaan Juburi, a Sunni parliamentarian
that many Shiites see as having been too close to Saddam
in the old days. He said, "If al-Yawer [had] attended
the ceremony, it would have been the end of him
politically."

Iraq thus enters the new world of elected government
with a great deal of suspicion being expressed about
ethnicity. The new Shiite leadership was threatening to
purge ex-Baathists from the military and intelligence
fields. Sunni Arab leaders complained that the Shiites
had not kept their promise to give the Sunni Arabs a
position in the new government that was appropriate to
them. Political scientist Nabil Muhammad Salim of
Baghdad University told the Arabic press, "Jaafari
demonstrated great flexibility in the negotiations, but
his colleagues put enormous pressure on him." Likewise,
he said, the Sunnis insisted on some names at a time
when they should have shown more flexibility. (The Sunni
Arabs are said to have put forward ex-Baath officers for
several posts whom the Shiites found completely
unacceptable.) The Arabic press reported that Jaafari
called on those ex-Baathists whose hands were not
stained with blood to express their contrition (for
having been Baathists) and to begin a dialogue with the
new government.

The most dramatic instance of Sunni-Shiite conflict this
past week concerns the death of Baghdad University
student Masar Sarhan. He joyously threw a party when
Ibrahim Jaafari was sworn in as prime minister. A member
of the Shiite Dawa Party, Sarhan was expressing his
solidarity with his party, which had won the office of
prime minister for the first time ever. He was gunned
down by three assassins. In reaction, Shiite students
rioted on Tuesday, attacking Sunni Arab students and
professors, whom they blamed for Sarhan's death.

In the meantime, Sunni-Shiite violence continued in a
number of hot spots. In the mixed neighborhood of Doura
in southern Baghdad, guerrillas constantly target
Shiites for killings. They especially go after Sayyids,
or those who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad. In
Suwaira near Madaen, police pulled 40 bodies out of a
river, most of them Shiite. Mourning family members
blamed Sunni guerrillas for the deaths. Rumors had
earlier circulated that Shiite hostages would be killed
in Madaen, and many Iraqis were convinced that the
bodies recovered were those of Shiite victims of Sunni
barbarity. The new, Shiite governor of Najaf, challenged
Sunni clerics to rein in their adherents and warned that
if the provocations continued, Shiites would take the
law into their own hands.

The entire Bush administration-driven political process
since last November has worked at odds with its own
goals. The U.S. military attack on Fallujah enraged most
Sunni Arabs and spread the guerrilla war to previously
quiet cities such as Mosul. As a result most Sunni Arabs
were not able to vote or were too angry to do so. Sunnis
ended up with only 17 seats in the 275-member
Parliament. Attempts to put them in the new Cabinet have
produced new wrangling and delays and bitterness. The
Sunni question in Iraq is now on the front burner. Given
all the explosives still missing in Iraq, that is a
dangerous place for it to be.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and
South Asian history at the University of Michigan and
the author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris,
2002).


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