[Mb-civic] Paying the Price of Democracy

[Harold Sifton]

Analysis: Paying the price of democracy
By ROLAND FLAMINI
UPI Chief International Correspondent 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- There must be days when the Bush administration is sorry it ever thought of regime change, and Thursday had to be one of them. Following the bombing of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq seems in danger of slipping into the civil war everyone has been dreading for months. 

At the same time, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been stonewalled by two key Arab states in her efforts to cut off funds for the newly elected Hamas-led Palestinian government. Resentment with the West over the cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed rages on. The original focus of Islamic anger was Europe, but Washington is concerned about it spreading, and on Wednesday a senior State Department official summoned key European ambassadors for what was called a "brainstorming session" on the problem. 

Reprisals against Sunni Arabs for the destruction Wednesday of the golden dome of the Askariya mosque began within minutes of the bombs going off in the important Shiite Arab shrine. The Shiites blamed the Sunni insurgents possibly linked to al-Qaida, for the outrage and began taking their revenge. Over 200 people died on Thursday in violent bloodletting. For example, armed men entered a house in Dora the predominantly Sunni section of Baghdad, took seven men from one Sunni family, and executed them. The bodies were found later shot in the head, and with their hands tied behind the backs. 

In the worst incident, 47 men who had taken part in a joint Sunni-Shiite demonstration near the shrine to protest the bombing were stopped by gunmen as they left the protest and killed. Also on Thursday, an Iraqi woman journalist working for al-Arabiya television channel was kidnapped and killed along with two members of her crew. 

Alarmed Iraqi politicians and clergymen called for an end to the killing. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sisatni, Iraq's senior cleric who is almost a recluse made a rare appearance on television while his statement appealing for calm was read out by the announcer. In Washington, President George Bush pledged U.S. help to rebuild the mosque. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the insurgents' aim was to provoke sectarian strife, "Don't fall into the trap." But that advice went unheeded as angry Shiites, who had for months borne Sunni attacks with relative restraint, appeared to have reached the limits of their self-control. 

The violence reduced to a shambles efforts by Shiite, Kurdish, and Sunni political leaders to reach agreement on forming a government following the January parliamentary elections which gave the Shiites the most seats but not an absolute majority. Shiites make up over 60 percent of the Iraqi population, and the Sunnis and Kurds both around 20 percent. The killing continued Friday even as the Iraqi government imposed a nation-wide curfew. The beleaguered Sunnis vented their anger on U.S. forces for not protecting them. 

Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting the Middle East, was being rebuffed in her campaign to isolate Hamas. First Egypt and then Saudi Arabia refused the Bush administration's request to cut off money to a Hamas-led Palestinian government. "It would be the height of irony if at the time when we need to take care of these people who are seeking peace, that we shall fall short of doing so," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal was quoted as saying at a Wednesday press conference after talks with Condoleezza Rice in Riyadh. The Egyptian rejection was more a gesture of solidarity than anything else because the Cairo government provides little by way of financial aid to the Palestinians: but Saudi Arabia gives the Palestinian Authority $15 million a month, plus other contributions to various West Bank and Gaza organizations. 

With a Hamas majority in the Palestinian national legislature and controlling any government that is formed, Prince Saud's assertion that the Palestinians are seeking peace has yet to be proven right. The Islamic militant organization has yet to put together its administration following its surprise landslide victory in last January's elections, and the group has given no indication that it is willing to comply with requests from the quartet trying to foster peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians -- the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations -- that it will renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and accept the terms of the 1993 Oslo agreement which envisions the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. 

Failure to comply will lead to the United States and the European Union cutting off crucial financial aid for the Palestinian Authority. U.S. aid is on hold pending what Washington has called "a review" of the situation. Israel has already stopped transferring money collected in taxes and customs duties on behalf of the Palestinian government, thus depriving the Palestinians of $50 million or so a month. A Bush administration official has been quoted as saying that the Palestinians need to raise around $120 million a month to meet the government payroll and other basic expenditure. Iran has stepped in with an offer of financial aid to cover any shortfall from cancelled Western help. The amount of Iranian aid offered was not made public, but the flow of cash from Tehran to Ramallah will inevitably have Iranian strings attached in the form of increased influence. 

The irony of the Western dilemma over how to deal with Hamas was pointed out by a commentator in the Arab newspaper al-Hayat. Hamas's election, he said, comes "from inside the logic of the new world order," that is, from the democratization which the Bush administration regards as its main political mission. But from the Arab viewpoint that "logic" finds expression in Islamic militancy because, in the short term, only Islamic movements like Hamas and, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood are organized enough to take immediate advantage of the new democratic process. The existing Arab regimes have stifled the growth of the moderate, secular political parties Bush is thinking about when he talks of introducing democracy in the region. 

Meanwhile, in Doha, capital of the Gulf state of Qatar, the Alliance of Civilizations -- a new U.N.-sponsored advisory group -- is meeting this week-end to consider ways of calming the wave of violent protest in the Islamic world over publication mainly in Europe of 12 cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed. 

The Alliance came into being in 2005 based on a joint proposal by Spain and Turkey and consists of 20 high level individuals who are supposed to produce recommendations by June 2006 on bridging the gap between the Western world and Islam. 

The cartoon crisis gave the organization a new focus, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will be at the Doha meeting to underline the importance of the meeting. Because the cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper and then in other European publications, but hardly at all in the United States, street anger was for once centered on Europe rather than America. 

The Bush administration has condemned the violent protests but at the same time strongly questioned the wisdom of publishing images that were gratuitously insulting to the Islamic faith. In advance of the Doha meeting, Ambassador Dan Freed, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs met with key European ambassadors to discuss Washington's concerns.

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