Robert Dreyfuss: Iraq: Pulled Out Or Pushed Out

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0309-33.htm

Iraq: Pulled Out Or Pushed Out
by Robert Dreyfuss

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While Congress may be stymied, however, something important is happening in Iraq.

Few Americans pay attention to Iraqi politics, but over the past few days something has occurred that could change the course of the war. For the first time since the Iraqi election of 2005, a coalition of Sunni and Shiite Arab parties and leaders is starting to take shape, across the sectarian divide that has fueled the civil war. It began two days ago, with the announcement by the Fadhila (Islamic Virtue) party that it is leaving the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), to become an independent political party.

With 15 seats in the Iraqi parliament and with a significant grassroots base throughout the Shiite areas of southern Iraq, Fadhila is a nationalist party committed to the idea of a unitary Iraqi state. It is opposed to the breakup of Iraq into regions or statelets. And its leader, Nadim al-Jaberi, is explicitly opposed to sectarianism. He is committed to reaching out to Sunni parties and secular groups to find common ground, and a new political coalition. Most important, like most of the Sunni parties in Iraq, al-Jaberi and Fadhila support the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

Fadhila is currently negotiating with Sunni and secular parties—including the Sunni religious bloc, a quasi-Baathist Sunni nationalist party and the secular Iraq National List led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi—on the formation of a new Sunni-Shiite-secular bloc in Iraq that would have nearly 100 votes in the 270-member Iraqi parliament.

Not only that, but Fadhila is a “Sadrist” party, whose origins lie in loyalty to the powerful Sadr clerical family. Fadhila is not loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the thirty-something mullah who leads the Mahdi Army. But there are enough ties between Fadhila and the Mahdi Army that perhaps Muqtada’s own bloc could be persuaded to join the emerging new coalition, too. (Late last year, Muqtada’s party pulled out of the Iraqi government, and according to Iraqi insiders Sadr is also talking to the same nationalist, Sunni and secular forces about the creation of a new “government of national salvation.”) Along with a handful of independent Shiite members of parliament, that would give the new coalition enough power in parliament to have a vote of no confidence in hapless U.S. ally Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, topple his government and then reconstitute a nationalist Iraqi government that could ask for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Even part of the ruling Dawa party, Maliki’s own party, is said to favor the idea.

Yesterday, members of the Iraqi parliament representing all of those parties—Fadhila, Allawi’s bloc and the Sunni parties—held an unprecedented teleconference with a dozen members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, an event organized by Representative Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.). Fadhila’s Nadim al-Jaberi took part in the teleconference, and he minced no words. “Putting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops is a very important step in giving Iraqis confidence that the occupation will end,” he said. Jaberi also added that by quitting the UIA, Fadhila has permanently splintered the Shiite bloc. “We have opened a very wide door in redrawing the Iraqi political map,” he said, hinting that Muqtada al-Sadr’s party might walk through that door and join the new bloc.

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a miserable 4 years and deserve their country back. We also must not steal the Iraqi oil. It is not right.