Who is stoking the fires in Iraq?

By all accounts, the situation in Iraq is nowhere close to normal, as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has been telling us since mid-2008. In early 2009, provincial elections took place in relative peace - the safest in Iraq since the downfall of Saddam Hussain in 2003.

The Sunnis - thanks to joint efforts by Syria and Saudi Arabia - took part in the elections, parting from their ill-fated 2005 boycott, which led to a parliament packed with the Iran-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The Sunnis walked out of the trenches to make themselves heard through the ballots, even in hotbeds of the insurgency, like Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

The Iraqi media boasted of Iraqis returning home, from Syria and Jordan, thanks to the Baghdad Security Plan imposed by Al Maliki. Iraqi dailies carried rosy photos of schools opening once again, schoolchildren on the streets, public parks being filled with lovers.

But last week, six car bombs went off, in various Shiite districts of Iraq, killing nearly 40 people and wounding 130. They were the worst in 13 months.

When any attack takes place, the Iraqi government usually 'rounds up the usual suspects' and in this case, it would be armed groups like Al Qaida, or the Baathists.

This time, the government fired back at a new, rising enemy, being the Awakening Councils (Sahwa), a 170,000-strong armed militia created by the US in late 2007, to combat Al Qaida. All of its members were drawn from heavyweight tribes in the Sunni community.

From day one, Al Maliki warned against the Awakening Councils, telling the Americans that it would be foolhardy to create such a military force, arguing that once through with combating Al Qaida, the Councils would target the Americans and the Shiites.

Last year, Al Maliki personally supervised massive recruitment of young Shiites into the security forces, regardless of their education, training, physical abilities, or discipline, in direct response to the Awakening Councils. Many of the recruits were drawn from underground militias like the Badr Brigade and Mehdi Army.

Al Maliki was seemingly telling the world, "If the Sunnis are going to legitimise their arms, under the watchful eye of the United States, then so are we!"

Last March, he began persecuting the Councils, saying that they had snowballed into a security problem, and pledged to disarm 17,000 of them, arguing that many of their big names were former members of Al Qaida.

Al Maliki even ordered the arrest of several Council commanders, accusing them of having established links with the Baathists. Many believed that Al Maliki was fabricating the Baathist-Awakening connection, to rid himself of both groups simultaneously.

Settling old scores, rather than bringing law and order, were the real motives of the Iraqi prime minister. According to the Al Hayat daily, during the past week, 53 members of the Awakening Councils were either targeted or killed.

If the Council is to blame for the six-car bombs in Shiite neighbourhoods - made in response to persecution of its members - then theoretically, the Shiite groups are to blame for the violence that ripped through Iraq, targeting Council members, during the past week.

It is too early, however, to blame anybody for the new phase of violence in Iraq. If we were to 'round up the usual suspects' we should see who benefits from continuation of the Awakening Councils, as a state within a state, and who wants to get rid of them. Iran is clearly unhappy with the Councils, because they threaten Shiite military supremacy in Iraq.

The US is cautious, fearing that it has created a monster - just like the case with Al Qaida in Afghanistan - that it can no longer control. Now that the Al Qaida threat is diminishing, it would rather that they disappear.

Secular Sunnis - Baathists included - are also unhappy with the Councils, since many of them are religiously driven, and financially linked to the US. Al Qaida is clearly not satisfied with the Councils as well, seeing them as traitors for having abandoned jihad against the Americans.

Amidst such confusion, it is very difficult to point fingers. Seemingly gone, however, are Al Maliki's promises of a new Iraq, along with all the strings that came attached with it.

During his March visit to Baghdad, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa hinted that the next Arab Summit, after Libya, might be in Iraq. He also called on Arab states to cross off Iraqi debts, now that the country was recovering, as a means of helping the Iraqi government, get on its feet. That too, has seemingly vanished into thin air.

Mousa urged Arab states to send ambassadors to Baghdad, following the model set forth by the UAE, Bahrain, and Syria, claiming that the Iraqi capital was now safe. Arab states are unimpressed by Al Maliki, who not only tricked them into believing that Iraq was recovering, but cornered himself - again - into petty sectarian rivalries that transformed him - again - into a political midget, unable to reconcile with the Sunnis.

Al Maliki has, to date, been unable to amend the de-Baathification laws. He has also been unable to get the Iraqi Accordance Front, a Sunni group, back onboard the political process. Rather, he is mending broken fences with Muqtada Al Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, two groups that scared away Iraqi Sunnis since 2006.

Leaders shoulder responsibility for success stories, and failure. If Al Maliki was responsible for the relative peace brought to Iraq since mid-2008, then he too, is responsible for the chaos that has prevailed, since early April 2009.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward magazine in Syria.

Considering the internal troubles, tremendous external and international pressures, Nouri Al Maliki is doing a tremendous job out-there. Some of his achievements are - complete Peaceful Provincial elections, Highly secured Ashura and Arbaeen gatherings where millions gathered, Setting-up a rigid time-table of American forces withdrawal, to list a few. Hence, in-view of the intense diverse population and the pressures all around, Maliki has come out in flying colours.
Raza Hyder
Toronto,Canada
Posted: April 14, 2009, 06:34