Divisive Plan to Unify Iraq

[Teaser]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-reconcile26jun26,0,2545893.story?coll=la-home-headlines


Many Iraqi analysts and politicians wondered whether the plan would be effective in drawing down the insurgency. Its most important features, first detailed in the June 17 issue of the Iraqi daily Al Mada, are designed to assuage continued Sunni Arab mistrust of the government. The moves would include the formation of national and provincial committees to negotiate amnesties; steps to demobilize militias and to prevent abuses by U.S.-led forces; and a review of laws purging from public life former members of the Baath Party, which ruled during deposed President Saddam Hussein's regime.

But the plan raised immediate doubts among the country's minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Hussein and now lead the insurgency. Many Sunni Muslims said the plan did not go far enough in heeding their demands, especially for the setting of a concrete timetable for the departure of U.S. troops, which many continue to call an occupying power.

"What do you want me to tell the honorable people? Not to hate the occupation?" said Sheik Ali Hatam Sulayman, a leader of the Albu Asaf tribe in the insurgent stronghold of Al Anbar province. "I can't. I'm sorry."

By diluting any language about a troop withdrawal, the proposal undermines itself, said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Baghdad political scientist sympathetic to the Sunni cause.

"If I were the resistance, I wouldn't talk with a government that depended on a foreign army," he said. "I would talk with the foreign army."

Some Iraqi critics also said the plan failed to address the changing nature of the violence, which they argue has turned more and more from a nationalist fight against U.S. occupation into a sectarian war waged between Arab-backed Sunni extremists and Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

"The whole thing is mixed up," said Sheik Ali Abdullah, leader of the Hamad Jasim, a branch of the Dulaimi tribe in Al Anbar. "We're giving Maliki a full opportunity, but we're sure this government will fail."