The Muslim News - Iraqi multifarious opposition

Issue 165, Friday 24 January 2003 - 21 Dhu al-Qa'dah 1423

Iraqi multifarious opposition

By Karen Dabrowska

Convinced that an American-led war will unseat the Iraqi regime, over 300 delegates from the multifarious opposition, announced the formation of a 75 member co-ordinating committee to lead the opposition.
London’s Hilton Metropole Hotel was the venue for the mother of opposition gathering which ended its deliberations on December 17. The committee list was distributed in alphabetical order, without any mention of party or political affiliations. Attention was only drawn to female candidates.
Dr Salah Shaikhly of the Iraqi National Accord (INA), emphasised that “the Iraqi opposition has been holding conferences since 1992 in Salahuddin (northern Iraq), Vienna and New York. At no time have nationalities or sectarian issues entered into the work of the opposition. It has always redirected its activities as political parties which have come into a coalition”. His views were echoed by Ibrahim Al-Janabi: “Just let everyone remember that he is an Iraqi before he is a Kurd, an Arab, a Muslim or an Assyrian.”
The co-ordinating committee includes representatives from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Supporters of the Constitutional Monarchy in Iraq, the Iraqi National Accord (INA), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). They spent months organising the conference. Also in the co-ordinating committee are independents from Islamic and liberal parties, former military personnel, tribal leaders and eminent political activists. The first meeting of the opposition’s newest grouping will take place in Iraqi Kurdistan, northern Iraq, on January 15. A leading committee will be set up to plan for the work of the opposition to overthrow Saddam. Subcommittees to deal with the media and foreign relations will also be formed.
Conference participants agreed on a political manifesto for the opposition whose buzz words include democracy, pluralism, respect for the rule of law and human rights and issued a blueprint for the transitional period, not exceeding two years, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein before elections are held.
But many dark clouds hung over the Conference. It was described as nothing more than an Iraqi political cover for American military intervention by the parties which boycotted the event: the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), the Islamic Da’wa Party, the Socialist Party in Iraq, the Islamic Party in Iraq, the Iraqi Command of the Ba’ath Party which split from the Iraqi ruling party, the Democratic Alliance in Iraq, and the Council of Ulama Mujahidin. They have set up the Iraqi National Forces Alliance which held a meeting in London on December 11 to confirm its objection to the Conference.
Iraq’s state-run media described the US-backed opposition groups as traitors. “Here on the land of Iraq will be buried the United States illusion of appointing a Karzai. Exported agents are a rotten commodity.”
The organisation of the Conference, which was rescheduled twice, has been plagued with disagreements about the influence of the Americans, the formation of an army of exiles, the perceived domination of SCIRI over other Islamic groupings and the list of invitees. The selection, rather than the election of co-ordinating committee members, and secret deliberations with the Americans in small rooms, rather than on the Conference floor also caused problems. Many of the participants are still unhappy with the compromises they made to ensure the event could be called ‘a success’.
The organisers mounted a major public relations offensive, with 500 journalists in tow, to counter suggestions that they were meeting on American instructions. US Senator, Sam Brownback, a prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted that “the opposition groups of Iraq are pulling this effort together to come forward with a unified message”.
But on November 17, the Bush administration sent David Pearce, the State Department’s Director of Northern Gulf Affairs, and William Luti, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs at the Pentagon, to London to pressure Saddam Hussein’s opponents to end their squabbles and meet. The Arab daily Al Hayat published a leaked memorandum in which the Americans outlined their agenda, insisted there would be no government in exile, called for a major public event and the creation of an advisory group representative of Iraq’s diversity which might serve as a liaison between the US and the opposition.
In letters of protest about the organisation of the Conference a number of Iraqis wrote to the State Department as “the actual sponsor and financier of this intended general conference”.
American pressure was credited with bringing the various Iraqi opposition groups together, yet the differences among the US foreign policy establishment itself was reflected in arguments off the Conference floor. On one side, hawks at the Pentagon backed the Iraqi National Congress which favours the establishment of an army of exiles. When President Bush’s US ambassador-at-large for “Free Iraqis”, Zalmay Khalizad, said that Washington wants the Iraqi military to be part of the liberation, his words reinforced suspicions that the US is now hoping a military coup will force Saddam Hussein from power and the exiled opposition will be marginalised.
The State Department and CIA are thought to favour the Iraqi National Accord, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, referred to as ‘the group of four’. The Islamic groups and the Kurds reject the training of an exiled army, for which the Pentagon will provide millions and claim it could precipitate a civil war. They insist they have trained fighters inside the country who need neither money nor weapons. The CIA was recently given more than $200million to pay for covert operations in Iraq, such as bribing key tribal leaders away from Saddam Hussein.
Before the final press conference, Ehsan Abdul Aziz of the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, told reporters that “everything was cooked upstairs and nobody knew what was going on. Some of the people whose names were included in the co-ordinating committee list were not even present at the conference”.
Shanaz Rashid, of the Kurdistan Children’s Fund, was concerned that prominent Iraqi and Kurdish womens’ groups were not consulted before female delegates were chosen. She asked why the Conference was focusing on the future after Saddam. “The issue should be how are the civilians going to be protected if there is a war? I am worried that everything we have built since 1991 will become rubble again.”
The General Secretary of the Iraqi National Accord, Dr Ayad Alawi emphasised that talking about democracy in a comfortable hotel in London is different from practising it inside Iraq. He believes that American pressure will weaken the regime and the forces inside Iraq will kill Saddam Hussein. “The building up of pressure will result in a crack inside and once things happen the people inside will decide on the transitional government. The opposition can provide a vision but cannot dictate how things should be set up.”
Nahida has spent 24 years in exile. She does not want to hear that Tony Blair asked Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad to pass an eleventh-hour message to Saddam Hussein that Iraq can still avoid a war if it gives up its weapons of mass destruction. “Saddam has to go so everybody [the four million Iraqis in exile] can return.”
For some exiles, Iraq is a lost paradise – for others it is a promised land. In the treacherous world of international and Iraqi politics where refugees and exiled political figures are often used as pawns in unscrupulous power games, both could be disappointed.

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