happened frequently - yet they have not responded. That is a significant
factor.
This outcome did not happen in a vacuum. There was major effort to persuade the
Sadrists. Many people participated in it. There were feted at meetings with the
mayor of Sadr City - who is not part of the Sadrist movement of the Mehdi Army,
but he has authority from them to pursue these meetings - and the multinational
force, and political officers from the [US] embassy.
All these are positive developments, because there have been many provocations.
Today [Tuesday] there was, for example, an
attack in the morning by the 6th Battalion, which is under US command, on
houses in Sadr City. The tension rose. There were contacts with the radicals
and those 60 were released and the thing was resolved. This is the kind of work
that is going on on a daily basis.
NIo: Now you say that these developments are positive. Can you qualify
just how positive they are? Does it, in your view, signal that there could in
the future be a decrease in tit-for-tat sectarian attacks?
AC: Look, these are beginnings. And they could easily be overturned. Let
us not make any exaggerated claims at this stage, but they are positive
beginnings.
Here is another issue: yesterday [Monday], in probably the most dangerous area
of Baghdad - Hai'amil, or the "worker's quarter" in the southwest of the city -
there are Shi'ites and Sunnis living there, and there was a protracted conflict
between the Mehdi Army and the Sunni armed force in the area. There was
tension. So we went there yesterday, along with the commander or the deputy
commander of the Muqtada security clan, and we went there to a Sunni mosque and
held a meeting. People saw that we were there. They came out of their homes and
attended, and it was broadcast on Iraqi TV. It had a positive effect, and the
parties agreed to form a committee and work normally, and the situation is
quiet there now.
If we do not build on this, if we do not provide the people something - they
have had no electricity for months, they've had no food distribution for
months, they've have almost no fuel, they could not go out of their area - then
I cannot guarantee anything.
But again, the sense is that people are fed up with the violence. They feel the
brink and they don't like it. They are trying to work back from the brink.
Now the prime minister is supporting this effort very much, and he in fact has
from his own Prime Minister's Office budget, he is granting a million dinars
[US$781] to every family that returns that was forcibly evicted from their
area. So many people are returning, and the moves that we made in returning
mosques to various communities that were taken from them is helping secure this
kind of feeling among the people there.
So the work is going on in the city at the popular level, and if there is to be
successful reconciliation, I believe that it also has to be done in the
neighborhoods among the neighbors who had been living together for many years
and when this sectarian violence emerged, they began to fight each other. Let
me emphasize to you that the areas of conflict in Baghdad are no more than 25
neighborhoods out of a total of 800.
NIo: Do you feel that the Maliki government has anyone on the Sunni side
who could similarly serve as an informal interlocutor with armed Sunni groups,
particularly the ones facing off with the Shi'ites? And does that person have
the ties and credibility to similarly prevent Sunni retaliation and unprovoked
attack on the Shi'ites?
AC: There is a Sunni politician, a senior figure in the Islamic Party,
his name is Naseer al-Ali, who was vice president of the National Assembly, and
he is working alongside me in those committees. He comes to all the meetings,
and we are working together with all the communities.
NIo: Is there anything you would like to add?
AC: After security is improved, the Iraqi government has to take
responsibility for providing a better output of products and services for the
people.
This is something that needs to be thought about and addressed with some depth.
We have now a decline in, as we speak, the amount of oil exported. We are now
down to 1.3 million barrels a day; the budget is based on 1.6 million barrels a
day at $50 a barrel, so we 20% below that. And we need serious consideration
about the oil sector.
Note
1. Ahmad Abdel Hadi Chalabi (born October 30, 1944) was interim oil minister in
Iraq in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006 and deputy prime minister from
May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in Parliament in the
December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May
2006, he was not awarded a post. Once dubbed the "George Washington of Iraq" by
American neo-conservatives, he has fallen out of favor and is currently under
investigation by several US government sources. He is also wanted for bank
fraud in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Chalabi was also part of a three-man executive council for the umbrella Iraqi
opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), created in 1992 for the
purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Although
the INC received major funding and assistance from the United States, it never
had any influence or any following to speak of in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
The INC's influence gradually waned until the December 2005 elections, in which
it failed to win a single seat in Parliament.
Chalabi is a controversial figure for many reasons. In the lead-up to the 2003
invasion of Iraq, under his guidance the INC provided a major portion of the
information on which US Intelligence based its condemnation of Saddam,
including reports of weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
Much of this information has turned out to be false. That, combined with the
fact that Chalabi subsequently gloated about the impact that their
falsifications had in an interview with the British Sunday Telegraph, led to a
falling out between him and the United States.
Initially, Chalabi enjoyed cozy political and business relationships with some
members of the US government, including some prominent neo-conservatives within
the Pentagon. Chalabi is said to have had political contacts within the Project
for the New American Century, most notably with Paul Wolfowitz, a student of
nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Perle who was introduced to
Chalabi by Wohlstetter in 1985. He also enjoyed considerable support among
politicians and political pundits in the United States, most notably Jim
Hoagland of the Washington Post, who held him up as a notable force for
democracy in Iraq. Chalabi's opponents, on the other hand, see him as a
charlatan of questionable allegiance, out of touch with Iraq and with no
effective power base there. - Wikipedia
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