Sabotaging Peace in Iraq

The events in Iraq during the past week make it clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that neither the Bush administration nor its puppet Shiite theocrats in Iraq want peace.

Ten days ago, the U.S.-installed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a grand show of offering "national reconciliation" with the Iraqi insurgency. In what seemed at first to be an olive branch to the insurgents, Maliki began dropping hints that the regime in Baghdad might offer a package deal to the resistance, including a broad amnesty for armed, anti-occupation fighters and an outreach to the deposed Iraqi Baath party. It was, according to Maliki and to Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a sincere effort to strike a deal that could end the fighting in Iraq and which conceivably could lead to the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Last week, I wrote skeptically about the thin possibility that Maliki might strike a deal with the resistance. By now, it is obvious that the Maliki-Khalilzad supposed reconciliation plan was no such thing. Khalilzad, President Jalal Talabani and Maliki have been conducting on-again, off-again talks with parts of the Iraqi resistance for at least a year but appear to have no intention of offering the insurgent groups a deal they can accept. Instead, Khalilzad and the leaders of the Iraq government are engaged in a cynical, divide-and-conquer maneuver that can only guarantee the war in Iraq will grind on for years.

Last Sunday, when Maliki released his much-anticipated reconciliation plan, it was vague and insubstantial. Maliki mentioned "amnesty," but the amnesty he offered did not extend to those doing the fighting. He included no outreach to the Baathists -- who are at the heart of the resistance -- and not a hint that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is on the table. Instead, Maliki simply asked the fighters to lay down their arms, and he called on Sunni tribal and clan leaders and Sunni Arab political blocs to join the Baghdad regime. It was a warmed over, but still very stale version of repeated calls by the U.S. occupation authorities and their Iraqi allies for an unconditional surrender by the resistance.

According to reports in the media, the fact that the reconciliation plan didn't include anything new was the result of pressure on the Iraqi government by the U.S. embassy and the American military command. For a few days, hope fluttered in some quarters, sparked by reports that as many as seven Iraqi insurgent groups had responded positively to Maliki's plan. Perhaps for the first time in three years, it seemed possible that an end to the war was in sight.

But as details of the plan became clear, the idea of national reconciliation was rejected virtually unanimously by the Iraqi resistance. By the end of the week, the Sunni leaders in Iraq closest to the insurgency were all reporting that the Maliki plan was dead. Hareth al-Dari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, said bluntly: "The main resistance factions have rejected [the plan]," and he called it "nothing but a public relations plan to brighten the image of the government." Added Hussein Falluji, a Sunni member of parliament: "The major factions have refused this initiative … This reconciliation plan is only in the prime minister's mind. It was born dead."

More bluntly, Maliki's plan was denounced by resistance leaders on the internet -- and the resistance answered Maliki with a devastating wave of violence, car bombs, and intensified attacks on U.S. forces. Not only that, but for the very first time a Shiite resistance group made itself known. The new Shiite force, called the "Islamic Army in Iraq: Abbas Brigades," is apparently not linked to any of the ruling Shiite religious parties, including the often independent-minded forces allied with Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and its call to arms echoed the line of the mostly Sunni-led resistance. Iraq, said the Abbas Brigades, is occupied by an American force that is "building bases [and] sowing sectarian sedition between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds." It pledged attacks on U.S. troops.