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Iraqi exiles throwing
elbows
By David Isenberg
As
the world waits and watches to hear from UN weapons
inspectors in Iraq, it is business as usual for the
Iraqi opposition groups on the outside - that is to say,
tumultuous, disorganized and mostly feuding.
The
US military has begun training 5,000 Iraqi exiles to
fight along with allied troops should an invasion
finally occur. And, according to Zaab Sethna, a senior
member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the
political leadership of the Iraqi opposition abroad, a
second group of 10,000 will begin training in a matter
of weeks.
On Sunday, six exiled Iraqi opposition
groups settled a feud that had delayed a meeting to
discuss their possible role in toppling Saddam Hussein,
according to an Iraqi dissident. In a US-brokered
compromise, INC leader Ahmed Chalabi backed off demands
to bring 300 more of his supporters to the meeting,
expected to be dominated by his powerful political
rivals.
Reportedly five US mediators from the
State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security
Council worked out the compromise during meetings on
Saturday in London. US Undersecretary of State Marc
Grossman pressed the dissidents to speed up the
convening of a broad conference on Iraq's future.
Grossman said that the proposed conference should choose
a committee to consult with all sectors of Iraqi society
about the country's future should Saddam be ousted.
The sides agreed to bring just 40 more delegates
to the meeting, said Hamid al-Bayati, a spokesman for
the six groups. That means about 300 delegates will
attend in all.
This opens the way for a November
22 meeting in Brussels - originally scheduled for
September - which is supposed to serve as a showcase of
emerging cooperation among opponents of Saddam. The
delegates are expected to debate ways in which the six
groups can help oust Saddam and form a possible
government afterward.
But the opposition remains
deeply divided and negotiations will be tough. The
opposition groups have not held a unity conference since
1997. The main reason that they are holding one now is
that the Bush administration has been encouraging them
for several months to resolve their longstanding
differences and to lay the groundwork for the creation
of an interim government should, or when, Hussein be
deposed.
But the latest dispute has raised new
questions about whether the groups can ever work
together and underscored the pitfalls of trying to
create an alternative Iraqi government. The groups have
deep ideological differences and mistrust of each other.
Each side has accused the others of trying to use the
conference to gain control of a post-Hussein Iraqi
government.
The Iraqi opposition is split along
sectarian, ethnic, clan and political lines. The
rivalries have grown more intense with the prospect of a
US-led war to oust Saddam. The Iraqi National Congress
is also clashing with the State Department over US$8
million in funding for propaganda, humanitarian and
other programs it is supposed to oversee. A
much-heralded INC "information-gathering" operation
inside Iraq has yet to get off the ground, the officials
said, because of uncertainty in the Bush administration
about the INC's ability to get and relay useful
intelligence.
Meanwhile, according to a news
report coming out of London, a confidential report
setting out how Iraq should be run after the ousting of
Saddam has divided the administration of President
George W Bush and ignited a damaging row between exiles
vying for power.
The report, funded by the State
Department in Washington and drawn up by more than 30
Iraqi intellectuals, urges that Saddam and his inner
circle be tried for war crimes, while mid and low-level
officials from his ruling Ba'ath party face truth and
reconciliation hearings modeled on South Africa's
post-apartheid commission. It recommends an amnesty for
those who join in opposing Saddam in the event of an
American invasion. The proposals also include
restitution of property confiscated by the Saddam
government, along the lines of post-Nazi Germany.
While such measures are broadly supported by the
main groups of Iraqi dissidents and by officials in
Washington, the report's recommendations for a
transitional government have become the focus of bitter
controversy.
The proposals are contained in a
draft document entitled "A Report on the Transition to
Democracy in Iraq". It has been drawn up under the
auspices of Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi writer and Harvard
academic who has chronicled Saddam's reign of terror,
and ally of Ahmed Chalabi, heads of the INC.
Makiya and his fellow authors have called for a
transitional government to be elected by a conference of
exiles. They say that this government, whose first
priority would be to limit disruption caused by the
disintegration of Saddam's authority, should be chosen
on the basis of "professional and individual capability
rather than political representation".
The
report is scathing about the state of the Iraqi
opposition, saying, "No Iraqi Arab political
organization on the scene today has been tested and can
be said to be truly representative." While the White
House and the Pentagon are understood to support the
proposals, the State Department is concerned that a
transitional government of professional people chosen on
merit would be dominated by the INC.
Chalabi
supports the findings of the report on Iraq's transition
to democracy, which envisages an executive and a
national assembly. However, the smaller opposition
groups, including two Kurdish parties, fear that their
role would become marginal if the proposals were
enacted, and are vigorously opposing them.
And
last but not least is a report in the new issue of
American Prospect magazine. It says that Chalabi is the
"front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time
neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the
oil-rich Middle East, put American troops - and American
oil companies - in full control of the Persian Gulf's
reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing
America's global strategic hegemony".
According
to the article, once an occupying US army seizes
Baghdad, Chalabi's INC and its American backers are
spinning scenarios about dismantling Saudi Arabia,
seizing its oil and collapsing the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries.
(©2002 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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