Make a Deal With The 'Enemies' and 'Insurgents' in Iraq?

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Robert Fisk: Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

For the first time, Sunni insurgents disclose their conditions for ceasefire in Iraq

Published: 09 February 2007

For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

Then come the conditions . . . http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2251354.ece



View from Iraq: A dialogue with the Sunnis will not help the Shia difficulties

By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 09 February 2007

The United States is stepping up the war in Iraq. For almost four years, it has been fighting the Iraqi Sunni community. Now it has started to confront the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shia cleric who leads the powerful Mehdi Army militia.

It is a very dangerous strategy for the US. It risks alienating the Shia without gaining the support of the Sunni. It brings it into conflict with the democratically elected Iraqi government in Baghdad, whose views and interests are ignored by Washington.

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It may be that, observing the increasingly anti-Shia and anti-Iranian trend in US policy, the insurgents are testing the water to see if there is common ground with Washington. The insurgent leader calls for "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution". It was in these elections that the Shia and the Kurds demonstrated that they are 80 per cent of the population. The constitution foresees a highly federalised Iraq.

In the Sunni strongholds of Baghdad, there may be more fear of Shia militiamen and the police commandos of the Interior Ministry than there is of the US army. Attacks on the latter have become less frequent. But the one uniting factor in the Sunni resistance is that all, nationalist and Islamic, are in opposition to the US occupation.

For the moment, the Sadrists want to avoid responding militarily to the American offensive against them. They hope that it will be seen as a US attack on the Shia as a whole. Whatever Washington may say about the Mehdi Army death squads, the Shia community see their militiamen as their one defence against Sunni car bombs and suicide bombers. These have struck again and again in crowed Shia markets over the last few months, inflicting horrific casualties.

The Middle East was destabilised when President Bush first invaded Iraq in 2003. The US midterm elections and the Baker-Hamilton report calling for talks with Iran and Syria were a chance to start defusing the crisis. This opportunity has now passed. It is very unlikely that the US will succeed in crushing the Sadrist movement, with its strong support among the millions of Iraqi Shia. Nor is it likely that the US will be able to stabilise Iraq while at the same time seeking to destabilise Iran and Syria.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2251363.ece

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