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Iraq

Maliki drops the mask

2008-09-05

With his tough stance on US withdrawal, Sunni militias and the Kurds Iraq's leader risks doom What's up with Nouri al-Maliki? As security anxieties subside in this slowly calming city, political speculation has rarely been so intense. First, it was Maliki's demand that all US troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Then came signs that his government wants to undermine the Sunni tribal militias, known as the Awakening councils, on whom the Americans have relied to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq. Now there are moves to take on the powerful Kurdish peshmerga troops and push them out of disputed areas in the strategic central province of Diyala. Why is the prime minister doing this? Is "the puppet breaking his strings", as one Arab newspaper put it? Or is the more appropriate metaphor "dropping the mask"? Those who knew Maliki in exile in Syria during Saddam Hussein's time now recall that he opposed the US-led invasion. His Daawa party did not attend the eve-of-invasion conference of US- and UK-supported exiles in London, and he opposed the party's decision six months later to join the hand-picked "governing council" set up by the first occupation overlord, Paul Bremer. Maliki's new line has discomforted the Americans. Some officials put on a brave face, saying it is a sign of Iraqi confidence in their own sovereignty, a development that, of course, they support as proof that the Bush administration's strategy of rebuilding a proud country is succeeding. Others say it reflects overconfidence, even hubris, as Iraq is a long way from being able to survive without US military protection. Either way, playing the nationalist card has huge potential consequences in Iraq. With provincial and parliamentary elections expected next year, it will sharpen the struggle for dominance in the Shia community. It is designed to undercut the appeal of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a consistent opponent of the occupation who is re-profiling his movement on the lines of Lebanon's Hizbullah. Its Mahdi army militia will be slimmed into a group of experienced resistance fighters, kept in reserve for action against US troops rather than to fight Iraqi Sunnis, while the rest of the movement goes into communal politics. Posing as the nationalist who managed to get the US to accept a timetable for withdrawal (the tense negotiations could yet founder) allows Maliki to distance himself from his main Shia allies in government, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), seen as keen backers of the occupation. It also diverts attention from the chronic power cuts and other economic troubles. Every government has to fight on its record in office, but, by turning himself into a patriotic Iraqi hero, Maliki may sidestep this. Some observers suggest he may even go to the elections on a "prime minister's list", to redefine himself as no longer a Shia or a political Islamist, so as to win support from Iraq's secular and non-sectarian urban middle class. But there are uncomfortable echoes here of the effort by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister appointed by the US in 2004, to project himself in the December 2005 elections as a strong man. His vote total fell a long way below his expectations. But if Maliki wants to present a new image as a man who stands up to the Americans, why does he choose this moment to go after Sunnis and Kurds? The principle of disarming all militias, and not just those of his Shia rivals, such as Sadr, may be laudable but the timing is highly risky and threatens to overload the circuits. Going after the Sunnis and Kurds may fail, dooming Maliki to defeat. Many Sunnis already believe he is a tool of the Iranians. Now they say his sudden anti-Americanism is no proof of Iraqi patriotism, but just shows he is a tool of Tehran. The Iranians want the US out of Iraq, not only in order to undermine US credibility in the region. They interpret Washington's support for the Awakening councils as a tilt towards the Sunnis and an effort to re-balance Iraqi politics from the Shia dominance of the early post-invasion period. Maliki's tough stance towards the US could doom him personally. The US toppled his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaaferi, and, even though US power in Iraq has declined since then, it may find a way to remove Maliki too. It would not demand that the prime minister go, as it did in 2006, but could undermine his parliamentary majority. The US has alternative candidates, including the ambitious vice-president, Adel Abdel Mahdi, and the Sunni defence minister, Abdul Qader al-Obeidi, who told the New York Times in January that US troops would be needed for another 10 years. Whatever his motives, Maliki's move has certainly shaken up Iraqi politics and forced the issue of a clear US departure timetable on to the agenda. The Iraqi prime minister has put Bush and McCain on to the back foot, and given help to Obama. Whether Maliki or Bush blinks first remains to be seen.

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Iraq

Maliki vows to keep Iraq from being a battlefield for others

2006-11-20

Iraq's premier said Monday he will not let country become a proxy battleground for Syria's differences with the United States, as Tehran called for a three-way summit with the Syrian and Iraqi presidents. Amid the stepped up diplomacy, more than 100 deaths were reported since Sunday morning and gunmen attacked the convoy of a second Iraqi deputy health minister. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's comments to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem came as the US military claimed that as many as 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month. "If Syria or any other state has differences with the United States, it's their own business," Maliki said. "It should settle these differences, but not at our cost," the premier told a joint news conference with Moallem, the first Syrian official to visit Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003. But Moallem insisted that he was not in Iraq to "please the United States." "I am nobody's godfather and not a mediator for the United States," he told a joint news conference after talks with powerful Iraqi Shiite Islamist leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim. "In this current situation there is no dialogue between Syria and the United States," he said. Maliki said Iraq aimed to improve its relationship with Syria, but that "this requires a strong desire from both the brother countries." "What goes on in Iraq is a threat for everybody," he said. "The interest of Syria is to contribute in the stability of Iraq." Maliki told Moallem that many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq are being planned in neighboring countries and that this must stop. Moallem denied Syria wanted to see instability grip its eastern neighbor. "Danger to Iraq is danger for the entire region," he argued. A government spokesman said that diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq will be restored this week during Moallem's visit. There has been increased talk of diplomatic efforts to involve Syria and Iran in helping to end the violence Iraq. An official in Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office said he had accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Tehran this weekend. An MP for the main Shiite bloc, Bassem Sharif, said that there was a possibility that President Bashar Assad might join the talks. "There is some expectation that the Syrian president may be present," he said. "There is a real desire to have such a three-way summit and there could be a surprise." But a Syrian official said "there are no plans for such a [tripartite] summit." In Washington, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey voiced skepticism that any meeting between Iran, Syria and Iraq could help to reduce the violence and said similar meetings in the past had not resulted in that happening. "In those contacts, we have seen public statements from the Iranian government, expressing their desire to reduce the violence and to respond positively to the situation in Iraq," Casey told reporters in Washington. "As I've said, unfortunately, those positive statements - and this applies to the case of Syria as well - have not been backed up by actual, concrete steps," he added. Concerning Damascus, Casey said, Washington is still waiting for action to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq from Syria. In Baghdad, coalition spokesman Major General William Caldwell said Monday that up to 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month. "We don't know how much they [the Syrians] are assisting this effort, but we don't know how much they are trying to preclude it either," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad. "We still see foreign fighters coming, between 70 and 100 a month coming across the Syrian border into Iraq," he said, figures in line with those of the past year. He said US and Iraqi soldiers had killed 425 foreign fighters so far this year and captured 670. Twenty percent of them were Syrian, a similar percentage Egyptian, and most of the rest from Sudan and Saudi Arabia. The past week has seen bitter sectarian tensions come to a head inside Iraq's national unity government. At a news conference uniting ministers who have been openly at odds over the fate of dozens of civil servants kidnapped last week, Defense Minister Abdel-Qader Jassem said the security forces were hunting the kidnappers: "We are in a state of war and in war all measures are permissible." Maliki, who is preparing a Cabinet reshuffle, warned political leaders they had to abandon sectarian, partisan interests and pull together. "We cannot be politicians by day and with the militias or terrorists ... by night," he told generals, whose own loyalties are in question. Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two guards near a Sunni rebel stronghold. Zamily was the second ministry deputy targeted in two days. Ammar al-Saffar, a member of Maliki's Daawa party, was kidnapped from his home by gunmen in uniform. In all, 21 Iraqis were killed Monday in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and near the Syrian border, and the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been tortured were found on the streets of several cities across the country, police said. US military data showed less violence in Baghdad in the past four weeks than at any time since the government was formed but it spiked last week, Caldwell said. - Agencies

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Iraq

Al-Maliki appears ready to compromise

2006-04-26

Jawad al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister-designate, said yesterday he hoped to form a government in two weeks, a move that would bring to a rapid close the political crisis that has paralysed government decision-making for almost five months. It would also mark a swift return on the decision to elevate 55-year-old Mr Maliki, who until last weekend was better known by the outside world as a spokesman for the Daawa party of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the man he replaced as prime minister. His confidence that a national unity government can be formed speedily stems from his involvement in the intense negotiations of recent weeks. "We have prior agreements . . . that makes our work easier," Mr Maliki said, referring to the joint statements worked out with Sunni and Kurds on the mechanisms a national unity government would use, and the policies it would apply. Mr Maliki helped craft these agreements, marking himself in the eyes of many Iraqis as a practical negotiator very different fromMr Jaafari, although both hail from the same Shia Islamist political party. While Mr Jaafari was known primarily as a Daawa ideologist, for over two years the somewhat unkempt and outspoken Mr Maliki has been the voice of the party, a functionary and spokesman who is more comfortable in the public eye than Mr Jaafari. A western diplomat said Mr Maliki's reputation was of one who was "very Shia but also pragmatic''. He has pledged to fight rampant corruption and, unlike many politicians, his reputation is untainted by personal corruption, adds the diplomat. Mr Maliki, who studied Arabic language and literature and who fought the Saddam Hussein regime from exile, first in Syria and later in Iran, is considered a true believer in Daawa's Islamist ideology. Formed in the seminaries of Najaf, it argues that Shia Islamic jurisprudence should guide the government in everything it does. As a result, Shia Islamists have clashed with the Kurds over regional autonomy, with the Sunni over excluding former members of the Ba'ath party from public life, with secularists over whether religious or civil law should govern family life, and with everybody over the extent to which the majority in parliament should dominate decision-making. Yet Mr Maliki has been broadly welcomed by Kurd and Sunni politicians. He is emphatically not a Washington-friendly politician in the mould of Adel Abd al-Mahdi, who opposed Mr Jaafari for the Shia coalition's nomination in February and whose Islamism often seemed a populist gloss on free­-market federalist ideas. While Mr Maliki believed in the Islamist centralism of the Daawa, which the more secular-leaning and federalist Kurds in particular believe is hostile to their interests, he also recently helped write several key policy papers which represent significant compromises and which diplomats say will greatly smooth the creation of government. Mr Maliki's language since becoming prime minister has apparently been aimed at Sunni worried that Shia militias, including the Mahdi army of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been engaged in a campaign of sectarian violence against 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

Crucial Shiite-Kurdish deal struck in Iraq

2005-03-11

Iraq's clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance and a Kurdish coalition have struck a deal that will allow a new government to be named when the National Assembly convenes next week, officials in both political groups said Thursday. The Shiite-Kurdish deal calls on the government to begin discussion on the return of about 100,000 Kurds to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk and talks about redrawing existing Kurdish regions to include the city in Iraq's new constitution. It also gives the Kurds just one major Cabinet post - one less than they demanded - in return for making one of their leaders, Jalal Talabani, Iraq's first-ever Kurdish president. One ministry will go to the country's Sunni Arab minority. The Kurds agreed to back conservative Islamic Daawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister. As part of the deal, any land agreement will be incorporated into the country's new constitution, which must be drafted by mid-August and approved by referendum two months later.

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Iraq-Jordan

Sadr’s popularity increases

2004-05-20

An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers. The poll was conducted by the one-year-old Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is considered reliable enough for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to have submitted questions to be included in the study. Although the results of any poll in Iraq’s traumatised society should be taken with caution, the survey highlights the difficulties facing the US authorities in Baghdad as they confront Mr Sadr, who launched an insurgency against the US-led occupation last month. Saadoun Duleimi, head of the centre, said more than half of a representative sample - comprising 1,600 Shia, Sunni Arabs and Kurds polled in all Iraq’s main regions - wanted coalition troops to leave Iraq. This compares with about 20 per cent in an October survey. Some 88 per cent of respondents said they now regarded coalition forces in Iraq as occupiers. Respondents saw Mr Sadr as Iraq’s second most influential figure after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most senior Shia cleric. Some 32 per cent of respondents said they strongly supported Mr Sadr and another 36 per cent somewhat supported him. Ibrahim Jaafari, head of the Shia Islamist Daawa party and a member of the governing council, came next on the list of influential Iraqis. Among council members, Adnan Pachachi, the Sunni former foreign minister, came some distance behind Mr Jaafari. Mr Pachachi is regarded as the apparent favourite for the ceremonial post of president when a caretaker government takes over.

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Iraq-Jordan

Iran, Sadr, and the Shiite Uprising in Iraq

2004-05-05

EFL The uprising of radical Shiite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr against US-led coalition forces in Iraq has stalled. His so-called "Mahdi army" has retreated from all of the cities it briefly controlled in early April, save for the Holy city of Najaf, where it is surrounded by 2,500 coalition soldiers. What initially appeared to be an outpouring of popular support for the chubby 30-year-old rabble-rouser has proven to be immensely shallow. At the height of the uprising, some American analysts argued that Sadr’s revolt was a plot by Iran to derail Iraq’s transition to democracy. However, while there is no question that the Iranians have provided some military and economic aid to Sadr, their intentions in so doing are not clear. Iranian Aid In a recent interview with the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a senior Iranian intelligence official who defected to Britain late last year claimed that Iran has built an extensive intelligence network in Iraq, comprising hundreds of agents with a budget of roughly $70 million per month at their disposal to buy influence.[1] The former official, identified by the paper as "Hajj Saidi," did not offer a breakdown of this spending, but main recipients of official Iranian government aid are believed to be the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Daawa party, headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and the Hawza al-Ilmiya, a network of seminaries in the holy city of Najaf run by the country’s senior Shiite clerics (marjaiyya). Significantly, all three have backed the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Hakim and Jaafari are members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). Iran denies having provided assistance to Sadr. However, while it may well be true that he does not officially receive government aid, it is evident that Sadr has received substantial funding from the quasi-governmental network of extremist Iranian "charities" that provide financing for the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, and that some members of the Sadrist militia have been trained by Qods division of Iran’s Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC). Sadr’s rise to prominence would not have been possible without this assistance. The loyalty of his core constituency was not won by fiery speeches, but by his movement’s provision of social services to the needy - the same method employed by Hezbollah to establish itself in Lebanon. Thus, the Iranians have pursued a two-track intervention in Iraq. On the one hand, they have supported the Shiite political and religious establishment, which has endorsed Iraq’s transition to democracy and cooperated with the coalition, while on the other hand, they have supported Sadr, who has challenged the Shiite establishment and tried to mobilize the Shiite community against the occupation. The magnitude of this contradiction is not fully appreciated by most Western observers because the media has greatly understated the level of antipathy between Sadr and the Shiite establishment. Sadr’s father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, cooperated with the Baathist regime during the 1980s and frequently denounced SCIRI as an "Iranian lackey." Then, after breaking with the regime in the 1990s, he denounced the "silent hawza" of Sistani for failing to speak out against Saddam. Although popular among the urban poor, Sadr’s father was hated by both quietist and opposition Shiite leaders. Moqtada, who lacks his father’s religious credentials, is hated even more. In light of the immense strain that Iran’s covert support for Sadr places on relations with its allies in the Shiite establishment, there are only three plausible explanations for it. Iranian Intentions The first is that Iran’s two-track policy in Iraq is a result of divisions within the Iranian ruling elite. According to Al-Sharq al-Awsat, the key officials involved in Iran’s military assistance to Sadr are Ali Agha Mohammadi, an advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Bagher Zolghadr, the assistant head of the IRGC; Ghasem Sulaymani, the commander of the Qods Corps; Murtada Rada’i, head of the IRGC intelligence service; and Hassan Kazimi Qummi, a former assistant head of the IRGC who was appointed Iranian charge d’affaires in Iraq. The key figure overseeing financial aid to Sadr is believed to be Sayyid Kazim al-Ha’iri, an influential hard-line cleric. Sadr’s backers in the Iranian security and clerical establishment operate independently of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, presumably with at least tacit support from Khamenei. Why Sadr’s backers would choose to authorize an uprising now is not entirely clear. Some analysts have suggested that the upsurge in Iraq’s Sunni insurgency may have convinced them that conditions were ripe for a popular uprising against the coalition. This is doubtful. It is unlikely that the Iranians somehow imagined that masses of Shiites would risk life and limb for Sadr. Another possibility is that Sadr’s backers recognized that their protege was incapable of fomenting a popular uprising, but authorized it in pursuit of a lesser objective. "We may be unable to drive the Americans out of Iraq, but we can drive George W. Bush out of the White House," Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is said to have recently boasted. A more likely reason is that Sadr’s backers feared that a coalition crackdown on their proxy was imminent. In the weeks prior to the uprising, the CPA closed Sadr’s newspaper for 60 days, raided money-changing shops that funnel Iranian money to him, and arrested one of his senior aides, while press leaks indicated that an arrest warrant had been issued for Sadr for his role in the April 2003 murder of moderate Shiite cleric Abdul Majid Khoei. The London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted an Iraqi security source as saying that the coalition’s expulsion of Qummi - Sadr’s Iranian overseer in Baghdad - likely contributed to the onset of the uprising. A second plausible explanation for this two-track intervention is that Iran is hedging its bets. If Iraq’s transition to democracy is successful, Iran would be able to exercise influence through SCIRI and Dawa; if it is derailed, Iran will have good relations with a political movement that is untarnished by association with the failed political process, capable of seizing control over the Shiite heartland and, if necessary, fighting coalition troops or resurgent Sunni Arab forces. A possible explanation is that Iranian support for Sadr is intended neither to derail the democratic process nor to cultivate an alternate Shiite political contender in the event of its failure, but to exert pressure on the Shiite political establishment. The refusal of most mainstream political and religious Shiite leaders to express unmitigated criticism of Sadr (in spite of their immense personal distaste for him) underscores how easily they can be intimidated by anyone who raises the banner of anti-Americanism. Iranian support for Sadr may be, above all, motivated by the desire to control if and when this banner is raised during the political transition process.

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Iraq

Iraqi Da'wa Party Resists Occupation By "Word"

2003-05-04

After more than 20 years of banned and underground activities, al-Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party has come to light after the downfall of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, calling for the establishment of an Islamic government that represents all ethnic and religious Iraqi communities and rejecting the U.S. occupation. Amir Taheri mentioned this bunch in an article in mid-May. Turns out they're Sadr's party... The party's platform, however, calls for resisting the occupation by "word", not by arms. "We are, no doubt against the U.S.-Anglo occupation and our advice to the U.S. troops is to withdraw (form Iraq) to avoid being bogged down in a quagmire. The Iraqis are sensitive to the occupation and their backlash would be violent
.The U.S. troops should put that in mind," the spokesman for the Shiite party, Abdul Kareem al-Enezi told IslamOnline.net. "We are part and parcel of this nation
we cannot fail it. And although we urge the Iraqis to resist the occupation by word for the time being and eschew violence but we cannot put a curb on their (anti-U.S.) feelings and reactions," said Enezi. "And even if we could, we'd have no intention of doing so..." On the party's platform, he said the party calls for "the establishment of an Islamic government that adopts Islam as a way of life." "We like the idea of cutting people's heads off..." "We divide our action into four categories: first, laying the stepping stone of the party and enticing Iraqis into our party; second, playing a leading role in Iraq's political landscape; third, establishing an Islamic government and fourth enjoining good and forbidding evil," he added. Enezi further said the party's broad guidelines are expected to be put forth within one or two days, noting that the party would press for "establishing an independent Iraqi state by its own people in a way that dose not conflict with Islamic Sharia law. "We enhance political plurality and the participation of Iraqi ethnic and religious communities. We are also keen on protecting human rights and call for an Iraq based on a constitution... We have no alternative but to call for a country that bolsters justice, equality, freedom and Islamic Shariaa law," he said. "Nope. Nope. Nothin' else we can do..." "We will try to stand on a common ground with all Iraqi national powers to draw up a joint platform capable of defending all (Iraqi) Muslims. We are neither a political nor a military Jihadist party, albeit politics is an integral part of our interest... Our party is based on entrenching Islam and enjoining good and forbidding evil." I sense this is a "party" in the sense Jamaat e-Islami is in Pakland... "It is an Islamic party that places all Muslims on equal footing. There is no difference whatsoever between Sunnis and Shiites Arabs or Kurds
 We [are] all like the teeth of a comb," he said. "The party has a politburo that helps promulgate its platform and form a national coalition with other Iraqi powers 
Although it is understaffed but they are shouldered with such responsibility." Asked whether or not the party had some cadres working inside Iraq during the era of Saddam, Enezi said the party resorted to clandestine meetings after the then Iraqi regime had tightened the noose around its members. "We were working in tandem with the Iraqi (opposition) exiles and enjoyed great popularity inside
 people were coming in droves to join our party and we could not contain all of them," he said. Enezi further said the party shares identical viewpoints with some of Iraqi parties, noting that it was communicating with most of Iraqi parties on a regular basis. That's a scary thought. But now we know what they're about... Al-Daawa party was established by Sheikh Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr in 1957. It was forced to go underground after Saddam had issued a decree in 1981 sentencing the party's members and their banner carriers to death in retrospect.

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Iraq

Shiite opposition rejects US military rule in post-war Iraq

2003-03-07

Iraq's Shiite Muslim opposition at a closed-door meeting here Thursday rejected US plans to impose military rule if President Saddam Hussein is toppled, an official of the main Shiite group said. Mohsen al-Hakim of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) told AFP that 250 delegates from the opposition exiled in Iran also opposed taking power in the name of Iraq's majority Shiite community. Hakim's father Abdel Aziz al-Hakim was named at an opposition meeting late February in Kurdistan as part of a six-member collective leadership also including Sunni Arabs and Kurds. "The Shiites insist that the future government be in the hands of the Iraqis, so as to establish peace and stability," said Mohsen al-Hakim. "Yeah, buddy! Once these eggs hatch, we're gonna have 2,987 chickens! Let's divide 'em up now!" "A non-Iraqi military leader to head Iraq would be a source of instability, just like a non-American military leader at the head of the United States," the official said. With an Iraqi leader, they've had nothing but stagnation stability for the past 35 years, haven't they? He said the Shiites were not seeking to set up their own government, but were rather "committed to the principles of political participation, diversity and legality". They had to go to Teheran to say that... "All the ethnic and religious groups should take part in deciding the political future of Iraq," said Hakim. Apart from SAIRI, representatives of the Islamic Action Organisation and Al-Daawa party were invited to the Tehran conference organised by an Iranian strategic research centre, Neda. Then just think of the Merkins as another ethnic or religious group. A big one, without whom you could squat in Teheran plotting and planning for another 20 or 30 years, okay?

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