|
|
IRAQ: Many Circling Around the Vacuum
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Apr 11 (IPS) - The political vacuum in Iraq is turning out to be
easier to spot than to fill. Proposals and ideas are coming crowding in,
but the names surfacing most often are not necessarily going to be the
most acceptable.
Several opposition groups from Iraq strongly oppose any move to
appoint Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress as the
administrator, or the chief Iraqi adviser to a U.S. administration.
There is considerable opposition even to an interim U.S.-led
administration. Nor is there agreement on a caretaker government led by
the United Nations. A meeting of opposition leaders - or would-be
government leaders as they have now become - was called in Nasiriyah
this weekend. That meeting has been put off, and it is no longer certain
when the meeting will take place and where.
"Any group that is imposed on us will be opposed," says Dr Hamid Al
Bayatti from the Supreme Council for Islamic Resistance in Iraq (SCIRI),
a leading Shia group in northern Iraq which controls Shia militants
known as the Badr group.
"An imposition of any person is against democracy," he told media
representatives in London Friday. "If the Americans decide to include
some and exclude others, it will backfire on them."
Other opposition leaders have strongly opposed Chalabi's move into
southern Iraq with a force of 700 men to support the U.S. troops. "That
has sent the wrong signal to political parties," says Dr Laith Kubbah,
an academic who has held leading positions in the Iraqi opposition over
the last 20 years. He is co-founder of the Iraq National Group based in
Washington.
"The message is that if one group can bring armed men into the
theatre, why not others?" he said. "Other groups have thousands of armed
men with them," he said. "We hope this is not the beginning of the
creation of warlords and militias among each political party."
Latif Rashid from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said: "We
have not worked for removal of SaddamHussain only to be replaced by
another dictator. I am not saying Chalabi is a dictator, but we will not
allow anyone to be imposed on us."
But the leaders are agreed on an urgent need to fill the vacuum.
Kubbah says people are glad to see Saddam Hussein go, "but no one is
happy about the ransacking and the lawlessness in Baghdad." There is an
immediate need to put pressure on the U.S. to maintain law and order.
People smell a vacuum and the absence of authority, and that has led to
the lawlessness, Kubbah said. "But enforcing law and order means use of
force, and we must quickly create the right political context for use of
force."
Bayatti says the U.S. and British forces are not a police force. "We
need Iraqis to be in charge," he said, adding that major Iraqi
opposition parties need to play a role together to fill the gap.
The Shia majority is likely to demand at last a rightful say in the
running of Iraq. Shias, who are about 65 per cent of the population of
Iraq, were suppressed under the largely Sunni-led regime of Saddam
Hussein.
"Shias are the majority in Iraq, the Americans cannot sideline us,"
he said. "The Americans can either heed the make-up and components of
Iraq or impose their own will. And if they try to impose their own will,
they will be rejected and opposed. There will be chaos."
A conference attended by about 400 Iraqi opposition leaders in London
in December had agreed that an Iraqi-led government must take over
immediately after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Many of those
leaders now seem to oppose joining an administration under U.S.
occupation. U.S. leaders have indicated meanwhile that they will be in
charge of administering Iraq for at least six months.
"They can take charge of meeting the humanitarian needs of the
moment," said Kubbah. "They are the force on the ground, and they can
meet the immediate needs of the people. But the U.S. cannot provide
security on their own without involving the Iraqi people."
Where the leaders differ is on which Iraqi people should be involved,
and on what basis. The leaders are not agreed that the United Nations
can supervise an involvement of the Iraqi people either.
"The UN has a role to play, and they can give legitimacy to an
arrangement, but without exercising executive power," said Rashid. "The
UN has little respect among Iraqi people," Rashid said. "They did little
to reduce the suffering of people despite their resolutions, the staff
they sent to Iraq is far less competent than local Iraqis, and they have
not been able to use the money they had."
In the Kurdish areas in the north the UN still has an unspent budget
of almost three billion dollars, Rashid said. "This is when schools and
hospitals have needed urgent attention. They have left a lot of gaps;
they could have done much more."
Not the U.S., not the UN, but Iraqis. Not the Iraqis the U.S. is
talking about; the rest are not being able to meet and talk. While the
leaders talk about what can be done and what not, the vacuum gets
bigger. (ENDS/IPS/MM/WD/EU/IP/SS/RAJ/03)
= 04111607 ORP008
NNNN
(END/2003)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is RSS?
