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Iraq

Subtle Hint to Senate: U.S. Embassy rips Senate plan on Iraq

2007-10-01

Seems pretty clear to me. I hope they'll get it. Just abandon it and try again. From scratch. No face-saving maneuvers, please. Just paying attention and including some real experts on all of the multiple intertwined issues in the process. There is no way a bunch of folks from the US can fathom what is going on here by themselves. Normally, I'd think State and the Senate were playing good cop/bad cop. But the Senate ain't that subtle. Or smart. BAGHDAD - The U.S. Embassy ... joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians — both Shiite and Sunni — in criticizing a nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines. The Senate resolution, adopted last week, proposed reshaping Iraq according to three sectarian or ethnic territories. It calls for a limited central government with the bulk of power going to the country's Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish regions, envisioning a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia. Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat presidential candidate, was a prime sponsor. In a highly unusual statement, the U.S. Embassy said resolution would seriously hamper Iraq's future stability. "Our goal in Iraq remains the same: a united, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern, defend, and sustain itself," the unsigned statement said. "Iraq's leaders must and will take the lead in determining how to achieve these national aspirations. ... attempts to partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means into three separate states would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed," it said. The statement came just hours after representatives of Iraq's major political parties denounced the Senate proposal. And much of that was probably putting it together, too! The Kurds in three northern Iraqi provinces are running a virtually independent country within Iraq while nominally maintaining relations with Baghdad. They support a formal division, but both Sunni and Shiite Muslims have denounced the proposal. At a news conference earlier in the day, at least nine Iraqi political parties and party blocs — both Shiite and Sunni — said the Senate resolution would diminish Iraq's sovereignty and said they would try to pass a law to ban any division of the country. "This proposal was based on the incorrect reading and unrealistic estimations of Iraq's past, present and future," according to a statement read at a news conference by Izzat al-Shahbandar, a representative of the secular Iraqi National List. Well, the Iraqis don't seem to be doing much better themselves, do they? On Friday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told The Associated Press that "dividing Iraq is a problem, and a decision like that would be a catastrophe." Iraq's constitution lays down a federal system, allowing Shiites in the south, Kurds in the north and Sunnis in the center and west of the country to set up regions with considerable autonomous powers. Nevertheless, ethnic and sectarian turmoil have snarled hopes of negotiating such measures, especially given deep divisions on sharing the country's vast oil resources. Oil reserves and existing fields would fall mainly into the hands of Kurds and Shiites if such a division were to occur. Why doesn't the US just keep it until they come out with a workable solution that all can whine about equally. That'll light a fire under them.

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Iraq

120 massacred as carnage returns to Iraq

2006-01-06

Two suicide bombers killed 120 people and wounded more than 200 in attacks near a Shiite holy shrine and a police recruiting centre on Thursday, the bloodiest day in Iraq for four months. Iraq's prime minister denounced the violence as an attempt to derail the political. But Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq, blamed Sunni Arab groups that fared poorly in the elections for inciting the violence. SCIRI warned that Shiite patience was wearing thin and accused the U.S.-led coalition forces of restraining the Iraqi army and its police and security forces. The suicide bombers struck in Kerbala, one of Shiite Islam's holiest cities, and Ramadi, a Sunni Arab stronghold in western Anbar province and a hotbed of the insurgency. The Kerbala bomber detonated an explosive belt laced with ball bearings and a grenade, killing 50 and wounding 138 at a market within sight of the golden dome of the Imam Hussein shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Television pictures showed pools of blood in the street, which was littered with debris. Passers-by loaded the wounded into the backs of cars and vans, and one black-clad woman stood crying while clutching her dead or wounded baby to her chest. About an hour after the Kerbala blast, another bomber blew himself up near police recruits in the western city of Ramadi, killing 70 people and wounding 65, hospital sources said. The U.S. military said the blast ripped through a line of some 1,000 men waiting to be security screened at a glass and ceramics works that was used as a temporary recruiting centre. After the debris and body parts had been cleared away, hundreds of Iraqis returned to the queue, the military said. Coming a day after 58 people died in a wave of bombings and shootings, the latest bloodshed ratcheted up tension between Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs and majority Shiites. "This is a war against Shiites," said Rida Jawad al-Takia, a senior SCIRI member. "Apparently to the terrorists, no Shiite child or woman should live," he told Reuters. "We are really worried. It seems they want a civil war." In a separate statement, SCIRI said that U.S.-led coalition forces were preventing Iraq's army and police from stopping insurgents, an apparent reference to increased American oversight of Shiite-dominated security forces following widespread charges of abuse - especially of Sunni Arab detainees. "The multinational forces, and the political entities that declared their support for terrorism, bear the responsibility for the bloodshed that happened in the recent few days. They should know that the patience of our people will not last for a long time," it said. "It's an odious crime which shows the savagery and sectarianism of these criminals," said Jawad al-Maliki, a top leader from Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Daawa party, speaking of the attack in Kerbala. "They are trying to change the results through terror," he said in a veiled reference to complaints by Sunni-based parties of ballot-rigging in the poll. President Jalal Talabani blamed the attacks on "groups of dark terror" and said they would fail to stop Iraqis forming a national unity government capable of meeting the demands of the country's rival sects and ethnic groups. A senior official in the Iraqi Accordance Movement, the main minority Sunni coalition, denounced the violence and called for solidarity among Iraqis to defeat it, but he blamed the government for allowing it to happen. "This government has not only failed to end violence, but it has become an accomplice in the cycle of violence by adopting sectarian policies and by weakening the state and strengthening militia groups," Izzat al-Shahbandar said.

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Iraq-Jordan

Shia businessmen resurgent

2004-02-14

Edited for brevity. Room 1503 at the Ishtar Sheraton hotel in downtown Baghdad was a bit of a mess. But the mess had promise not seen in any Iraqi hotel since the 1970s. Italian marble tiles lay piled in the center of the room on a recent morning. Next to them was a stylish white bathtub. On the balcony, workers stood on newly laid terracotta tiles, preparing to install dark wood shutters. The room would have a minibar, its designers said, German designer bathroom fixtures, an electronic safe and a keycard door. It would look just like a business hotel room anywhere else in the world. But it would be a first for Baghdad. Room 1503 is a model put together by International Trade Investment (ITI), an Iraqi company bidding for the $7-million contract to renovate the high-rise hotel, which looks like it hasn’t been painted for a couple of decades. ITI is owned and run mainly by Izzat al-Shahbandar, a Shia Muslim businessman who left Iraq in 1981 and only returned after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime last year. Shahbandar, who wears well-fitted suits and smokes cigars with a studied relaxation, is among a new wave of Shia businessmen achieving success here. As Iraq’s Shia majority grows in political and religious power, long-suppressed Shia business owners also are quietly taking advantage of enormous new opportunities for making money in Iraq. Many, like Shahbandar, have returned to Iraq after years overseas accumulating experience and contacts; others languished under Hussein, whose Sunni-dominated regime cut Shias out of profitable businesses. "It will lead the Shia to become more powerful in Iraq," said Shahbandar’s nephew, Ahmed Shahbandar, 29, director of ITI’s commercial section. "The political power of the Shia must be supported by the strong economic power of the Shia in order to be secure." Ahmed’s friend and business partner, Mahmoud Khozai, 40, explained that the Shia business community must rely on good relations with leaders of the sect’s religious hierarchy. "The businessman needs the religious powers to support him," said Khozai, who is starting work on setting up an airline for ITI. "They need the ayatollahs. For people to trust these business people they need good relations with the ayatollahs." Iraq’s powerful Shia clergy have something to gain from the businessmen, too: Shia tradition holds that a man must give 20 percent of his income to the poor, usually through the clergy. ...who will ensure that the poor see about five percent after administrative costs according to the universal practice.

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