[Marxism] Top Shiite leader wants foreign troops out "as soon as possible"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

But he indicates sharp opposition to Chalabi's attempts to cut deal with
Sunni rebels on basis of US withdrawal.
Fred Feldman


>From Informed Comment, Juan Cole website
"Foreign Forces Must Leave Iraq as Soon as Possible," Declares the Head
of the Shiite Alliance
    By Patrice Claude
    Le Monde

    Monday 08 March 2005

The elected Parliament will meet March 16. From our special envoy to
Baghdad.
    Permanent American bases in Iraq? The question seems so incongruous
to His Most Austere "Eminence Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim," (as the leader of
the Shiite party which won the January 30 elections identifies himself
on his visiting card) that he almost bursts out laughing. "Ha! Ha! No.
No one in Iraq desires the establishment of permanent foreign bases on
our land. The United Nations Security Council resolutions are clear: it
will be up to the elected Iraqi government, when the time comes, to give
those forces a specific departure date. As soon as possible."

    The head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -
SCIRI, an embarrassing name today and one which should soon evolve
towards something a little less radical - is, in fact, there to announce
to us the imminent formation of this first legitimized government of the
post-Saddam Hussein era. The parleys between the parties have been going
on for five weeks and are nearly over.

    "We've agreed to hold the first session of the elected National
Assembly on March 16," he announces. The date is highly symbolic for the
Kurdish minority, since it was on March 16, 1988 that the fallen regime
had had around 5,000 residents of Halabja, in the north-east of the
country, gassed. "We are hopeful that our discussions with our Kurdish
brothers and the other groups we hope to bring into the government will
be completed by this date." Seventeen years later to the day, and,
excepting some dramatic event that is always possible in the prevailing
political configurations today, Iraq will then have a head of state, a
Prime Minister, and a government truly resultant from a national
election in which, however imperfect it may have been, 58% of its
citizens participated.

    A member of one of the three great Shiite religious dynasties in the
country, the Hodjatoleslam Al-Hakim spent more than twenty-three years
in exile in Teheran, where he himself, and his older brother who was
assassinated on his return to Iraq in May 2003, created the SCIRI. He
was number one on the list of the 21 parties in the United Alliance,
which won an absolute majority of the 275 seats in the new Assembly.

    Nonetheless, the Fundamental Transitional Law, which American
lawyers concocted before the partial restitution of their sovereignty to
Iraqis on June 30, 2004, forces the Assembly to approve the Presidential
Council by a 60% majority. Only the three members of the Presidential
Council may propose the members of the next government from among those
elected, beginning with its Prime Minister, most likely the head of the
rival Islamist party, Daawa, Ibrahim Al-Jaffari. In order to impose the
men and women of its choice, the Unified Alliance, which had announced
its intention to include the largest number of parties, "Sunni and
Christians included," into a kind of "government of national unity,"
therefore had to at first obtain the agreement of the second largest
party in the Assembly, the so-called "Kurdish bloc," which controls 20%
of the seats.

    The Kurds have numerous and precise demands, which have been the
source of much of the delay in forming the government. How many and
which ministries for each of the competing parties? Even if the parties
had apparently reached an understanding that the Presidential Council
should be led by Jalal Talabani, a major Kurdish political personality
who should become Head of State, and that his vice presidents should be,
one from the Shiite tradition, and probably the other from the Sunni
tradition, the totality of the process must still be carefully
choreographed before it can be approved by the Assembly without any
hitch.

    With the gray beard and black turban of the "Sayyeds," the
recognized descendants of the prophet among the Shiites, Abdul Aziz
Al-Hakim agrees to one of the main Kurdish demands: the establishment of
an Iraqi federation. To those on his side and elsewhere who fear that
that will lead to a division of the country, the Sayyed responds: "More
than 60 countries operate this way. If it can resolve problems in Iraq,
why not?"

    On the other hand, what is "unacceptable" in his eyes is to
deliberate with the guerrilla movement. Ahmad Chalabi, the secular
Shiite businessman who was accepted into the party and who will have a
seat in the new Assembly, has recently let it be known that he has
conducted "several meetings with the rebels to convince them to lay down
their arms." Mr. Al-Hakim, for his part, refuses "to talk to these
killers and criminals."

    Last week, following the death of three members of the Badr
organization - the former "Badr Brigade" that was SCIRI's military arm -
in a police station, His Eminence launched a violent diatribe against
the rampant "re-Baathization" of the security services. He repeats,
"Everyone knows that the Baathists have infiltrated the army and the
police. We must flush them out."



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