Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached at his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.
In two days, the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq could be here—that is, if the Bush administration and its Shiite fundamentalist friends in Baghdad don’t mess it up. They’re trying.
On November 18-19, an open-ended peace conference on Iraq is scheduled to take place under the auspices of the Arab League. So far, the United Nations, the European Union and (apparently) all of Iraq’s neighbors have signed on to make it work. It is the first serious world diplomatic effort to deal with the crisis in Iraq wrought by the Bush administration’s illegal war. And it just might work. But, as the Daily Star of Beirut said in an editorial: “It is a huge challenge for the Arab League to attempt to clean up the mess that the U.S.-led invasion has created in Iraq.”
According to first reports, 100 Iraqis will attend the meeting, including Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders. At the insistence of certain Shiite and Kurdish politicians who lead the ersatz government of Iraq, the organizers of the conference have apparently agreed not to invite any prominent Baathists. “No invitation was addressed to former Baathists, upon the request of Shiite groups,” reports UPI. But it is certain that the Baath Party and other Iraqi nationalists will be waiting in the wings, and that at least some of the Iraqi Sunnis who attend will be those with close ties to the Baath-military-nationalist forces. Grumbling, grudgingly, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari will go to Cairo, even though his Al Dawa party opposed it. Many other Iraqi leaders will go, too—most importantly, representatives of a spectrum of organizations that more or less can represent the Sunni-led resistance. It is diplomatic coup for the Arab League, which has done something that the United States ought to have organized itself long ago.
White House On The Sidelines
Not only did the United States not organize it, but there are signs that Washington is unhappy with the League’s action, and so far, the Bush administration is pouring cold water on it. Speaking on Radio Sawa, Donald Rumsfeld criticized the Arabs, specifically citing Saudi Arabia and Jordan, something so utterly stupid to do at this critical juncture that it can only have been deliberate. Rumsfeld said that the Arab states need to do more to help Iraq, as in (for instance) sending embassies to Baghdad. "I think there is more they could have been doing, and I think there is more they should be doing,” he muttered. And Condi Rice, who was slapped in the face over the weekend by the Egyptian government, which rejected her Elizabeth Cheney-led democracy initiative, stressed that whatever the Arab League does, it has to pay less attention to the Iraqi opposition and remember that Iraq’s Shiite-Kurdish government is supreme:
I would hope that those who participate in the Arab League events—Arab League-sponsored—will recognize that they are participating with an Iraqi Government that has indeed been elected and that the Iraqi Government that is elected after December will be even more representative. And so the lead on this really ought to be with the Iraqi Government.
A veritable flurry of diplomatic contacts preceded the announcement of the Nov. 19 conference. For the past several months, Iraq’s Arab neighbors—including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, joined by Egypt—have been looking for a diplomatic opening to end the war. The seriousness of their concern was signaled a few weeks ago when, in Washington, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister warned that Iraq could break apart in a civil war if the war isn’t stopped. Last weekend, after weeks of preparation, the Arab League’s deputy secretary general, Ahmed Ben Hilli, traveled to Baghdad for a five-day visit, during which he consulted with all of Iraq’s factions. At the same time, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan made contacts with Iraqi resistance groups, including many of the same organizations that have been talking to Iraqi Sunni leaders such as Aiham Al Sammarae about a negotiated peace settlement. (Readers of this space know that for the past three months, I’ve been in regular contact with Sammarae and other officials in Iraq involved in these talks.) The Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, traveled to Saudi Arabia—which has pledged $1 billion to help rebuild Iraq—and to Syria to nail down their roles in the conference and called Jordan’s King Abdullah. In early November, he met U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who then made a surprise visit to Baghdad. Before visiting Iraq, Annan huddled with France’s Jacques Chirac and then went to Cairo to meet with President Mubarak, Egypt’s prime minister, and Egypt’s foreign minister. In other words, the entire leadership of the Arab world is involved in this effort, along with the U.N.
Also backing the conference is Javier Solana, the foreign policy leader for the European Union. Solana too met with Mubarak in the Egyptian capital. Even the Russians are in the act: In a surprise visit, Russia’s Igor Ivanov visited Baghdad on behalf of President Putin to throw Moscow’s weight into the diplomatic offensive. That leaves the United States as the only major player not enthusiastically supporting the Cairo conference.
Opposition Maneuvers
Last week, the Arab League's Hilli announced that the Arab League had fixed a date of November 19 for the meeting. According to Hilli and Moussa, the meeting is supposed to be a preliminary one, involving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis from Iraq—including representatives of the resistance. It is meant to pave the way for a larger, and more comprehensive conference on Iraqi reconciliation early next year, probably in January.
The Arab League has been explicit about inviting leaders of the Iraqi Baath party, whose military officers and political leadership are the backbone of the anti-occupation forces in Iraq. “Let us talk about the Baath Party,” said Hilli. “This party had more than a million Iraqis in its membership. Should all these be excluded from attending the dialogue and building Iraq? Certainly not." Hilli and Amr Moussa, who also visited Iraq, are preparing a list of potential attendees for the conference, to be held in Cairo. The key to its success is deciding precisely which Iraqi opposition figures to invite.
Inside Iraq, the main Shiite parties opposed the idea of the Cairo conference and had to be dragged into it against their will. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), fought the effort by the Arab League every step of the way. Abdel Aziz Hakim of SCIRI, the former commander of the paramilitary Badr Brigade sponsored by Iran’s revolutionary guards, said that there is no need for a reconciliation conference in Iraq since, he says, “there are no clashes between the Iraqi people.” He went on to bitterly criticize Amr Moussa, saying that the Arab League “had failed to condemn terrorists and Saddamists.” (In fact, the League has strongly condemned the terrorists but seeks to compromise with Iraq’s Sunni leaders and some Baathists. SCIRI, on the other hand, lumps the entire opposition into the single category of “terrorists.”) Other Shiite parties—including Al Dawa, led by Iraqi President Jaafari, and Muqtada Sadr's party—both denounced the Arab League initiative. Al Dawa, Sadr and Hakim all initially demanded that the conference be held in Baghdad, where, of course, no security-minded opposition leader would dare show his face.
And in Washington, as I reported last week , Ahmed Chalabi went out of his way at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute to lambaste the Arab League.
Reasons For Hope
But there are hopeful signs, too, from Iraq. Mouaffak Al Rubaie, the national security adviser for the Iraqi government, traveled to Egypt to meet the Egyptian foreign minister. Most significantly, there are signs that Iraq’s Kurds welcome the League’s work, too. Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader who is Iraq’s foreign minister, said:
We expect a good presence, especially by the political leadership, even though they might not be governmental or official. At the same time, there will be political governmental leadership involved. So we want to assist in order for this initiative to succeed, because it serves the cause of the Iraqi people in terms of security, stability, peace and national agreement.
Zebari’s statement could be decisive, because if the Sunnis take part and the Kurds join in, it could isolate the Dawa-SCIRI-Sadr axis. That, in turn, has the potential to break the alliance between the Shiites and Kurds in Iraq. The prospect of a Kurdish-Sunni deal would alarm the Shiites, especially since the Kurds (from the 1970s through the 1990s) routinely cooperated with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party when it suited them to do so. Zebari made a crucial distinction, saying that he is willing to sit down with “moderate Baath” members but not ““Baath Saddam-ites.”
From the Sunni side, listen to Adnan Al Dulaimi, a key Sunni leader who is not part of the resistance but who maintains ties with some insurgents: “The Arab League called for holding an Iraqi reconciliation conference. All Iraqi political shades responded favorably to the Arab League's invitation. This conference will be supported by the United Nations, the Security Council, the EU, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the neighboring countries. I believe this support can ensure the success of the conference.”
Meanwhile, the United States is continuing its massive offensive operations in the Sunni triangle and along the Iraq-Syria border, only weeks before Iraq’s critical December 15 elections. Saleh Mutlaq, a key Sunni leader, expressed the outrage of his community over the timing of the U.S. offensive in relationship to the Arab League initiative:
Imagine that we go to a reconciliation [conference] at a time when houses are being destroyed over our sons' heads. What kind of reconciliation is this? And what kind of prelude to a reconciliation is this? Certainly, these operations will not create an atmosphere suitable for holding the upcoming reconciliation conference.
But he also said (are you paying attention, America?) that the resistance is ready for a ceasefire in exchange for a U.S. withdrawal:
Our demands are clear. We want a liberated Iraq. We want the occupation to end in Iraq. We believe that when the resistance sees that the occupier has decided to go, it should abandon its weapons and join the political process in order to calm the situation in the country. Otherwise if the situation remains the same as it is now.
The incredibly badly timed U.S. offensive (“clear, hold and build” is the latest Condi-Rummy mantra) also came under fire from a leading paper in Qatar—just one sample of how this is being viewed in the Arab world, even in a pro-U.S. fiefdom like Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command has its headquarters:
As an Arab League delegation arrived in Baghdad [wrote Qatar's Al Rayah] to prepare for fresh talks on the Iraqi national reconciliation conference, the U.S. army launched Operation Steel Curtain, which is one of the biggest operations launched by the army this year... This came at a completely wrong time. Whenever the stakeholders in Iraq come close to their goal of making Arab Sunnis participate in shaping the future of Iraq, the U.S. army comes up with an excuse that flares up the situation and causes new divisions among the Arab Sunni representatives.
Meanwhile, Aiham Al Sammarae is (finally) getting some notice in the American media—in the AP, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. AP quoted Sammarae saying that “some [insurgent groups] will run next month and gave their demands and conditions to start peace talks with U.S. forces. “The resistance should have an active role to help Iraq get out of its crisis,” he said. Among the conditions: an end to all military operations by U.S. forces, the release of all detainees, the withdrawal of foreign forces from the cities, and setting a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq. Sammarae told the Los Angeles Times that resistance leaders are going to Cairo with him. “Some of them are coming with me to Cairo and are willing to talk with whomever I can make them meet.”
Of course, the meeting in Cairo is only a first step. It is a fragile effort, and one that could collapse and fail if it is overtaken by spreading civil conflict in Iraq. But so far, at least, it is the very first hopeful sign that diplomacy can help end the war.
