[Mb-civic] An article for you from Michael Butler.

Fri Mar 17 10:37:49 PST 2006

- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -

Dear civic,

Michael Butler (michael at intrafi.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.

The sender also included the following message for you:

Current scene in Iraq

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IRAN'S POLITICS
Mar 16th 2006  

Three months after elections, the Iraqi parliament is meeting against a
backdrop of increasing sectarian violence

FOR much of the past two years Iraq has seemed poised to dissolve into
hostile ethnic and sectarian enclaves. But this week--on the third
anniversary, as it happens, of the American-led invasion--the body
politic seemed even more fragile than usual. On Sunday March 12th a
series of bombs and mortar barrages ripped across the Shia slum of Sadr
City, killing more than 50 people--a strike that seemed designed to
stoke the anger that was still simmering after the demolition of the
Shia Askariya shrine three weeks ago, and hasten the descent into civil
war.

The Sadr City suburb is the Baghdad base of the Mahdi Army, loyal to
Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia cleric. His men were probably
responsible for many of the reprisal attacks launched against Sunni
mosques after the bombing of the Askariya shrine. Nonetheless,
inhabitants had considered themselves to be living in something of a
safe zone. In part, this was because of the ubiquitous black-clad
militiamen who stop any strange car that ventures into Sadr City. But
it was also because of the position of Mr Sadr himself. Whatever his
followers' inclinations, he has always been careful to express
solidarity with Sunnis against the American and British occupiers. 

That sense of safety has been shattered since rumours spread through
the slum that residents of surrounding middle-class Sunni
neighbourhoods had been gunning down Sadr City residents on their way
to work. Some Sadrists say that it is now high time to end the menace
posed by Sunni extremists once and for all. If the religious leadership
would just give the word, say the hotheads, Baghdad could become a Shia
city "in minutes".

Mr Sadr has tried to calm down his followers as he always does, by
diverting blame towards the Americans. But in a televised address he
did utter one ominous reference to the Americans preventing his
militias from striking at the "TAKFIRIS"--that is, at the Sunni
ultra-puritans whom Shias blame for most attacks. And since some of Mr
Sadr's followers do not make much distinction between TAKFIRIS and
mainstream Sunnis, this set the scene for a new round of revenge
killings. 

Grisly evidence of these killings has been surfacing all week. On
Wednesday, police said that during the preceding 24 hours they had
discovered the bodies of 87 people killed execution-style, although
some of them might have been murdered before the latest blasts. The
victims were discovered in both Shia and Sunni districts of Baghdad.
Some had been tortured. The discovery of these bodies, so soon after
the blows against the protected Shia neighbourhood and the Askariya
shrine, can be expected to feed the cycle of reprisals and
counter-reprisals in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, an increasingly personalised quarrel between the Shia-led
United Iraqi Alliance on the one hand and the Kurdish, Sunni Arab and
secular parties on the other threatens to paralyse politics altogether.
Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader, has led a campaign to force the
Alliance to rescind its decision to re-nominate Ibrahim al-Jaafari as
prime minister. Mr Talabani says that during his year in power Mr
Jaafari consistently failed to implement Kurdish-Shia agreements on
resettling refugees and otherwise undoing Saddam-era ethnic cleansing
in the disputed city of Kirkuk. The dispute has now grown into more
than just a matter of policy differences. The Kurds say that they
simply have no faith that Mr Jaafari will act on his commitments. The
Sunnis have their own complaints, mostly related to the government's
failure to protect them from abuses by the security forces. On
Thursday, Mr Jaafari said he would withdraw his nomination "if my
people ask me to step aside".

The dispute over Mr Jaafari's leadership has poisoned Iraqi politics to
the extent that, until a week ago, nearly three months after December's
elections, the two sides could not even agree to convene the newly
elected parliament by the constitutional deadline of March 15th. The
constitution is ambiguous about how binding the transitional deadlines
are: failure to abide by them does not necessarily mean a crisis. But
ignoring the date completely would not have boded well for the
prospects of forming a new government, let alone one that might entice
the formerly excluded Sunni parties into government. Only after the
personal intervention of Zalmay Khalilzad, America's energetic
ambassador, did the quarrelling groups at last agree to meet on
Thursday. Even so, all the outstanding issues remain. Mr Khalilzad has
spoken of herding Iraqi leaders into a conference, possibly outside
Iraq, to "work day and night" to reach a consensus on how to proceed. 

Nonetheless, Iraq continues to generate the odd ray of hope. One such
is a recent agreement intended to deal with the problem of death
squads. Sunnis have long accused the Shia-controlled interior-ministry
forces, both police and commandos, of abducting and killing Sunnis. 

Last weekend the defence and interior ministries announced an agreement
designed to address these concerns. Under this the army, which has a
less brutal reputation, will accompany interior-ministry forces on all
their raids. The interior ministry is also investigating an incident in
which an American patrol reportedly caught a death squad red-handed on
its way to kill a prisoner. Occasional accords such as this, in
addition to the periodic bursts of rhetoric extolling the virtues of
national reconciliation that follow outrages such as the Sadr City
bombings, suggest that none of Iraq's main factions is ready to march
over the edge just yet. Nor, however, do they show much readiness for
compromise.

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5636302&fsrc=nwl

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