By Robert H. Reid
Associated Press, 29 January 2006
It's already a bitter fight and getting more acrimonious by the day — the question of who should control Iraq's police and army.
At stake is whether Iraq slides toward civil war — and how long American troops might have to stay to keep the peace.
In a clear sign of the issue's importance, American officials have been pointed in their demands that the two sides reach a deal, and that no one group should monopolize key ministries. But so far, the sides are getting further apart, not compromising.
Sunni Arabs insist that Shiites aligned with sectarian groups with private militias cannot control the key interior and defense ministries that run the police and the army.
"We will work hard to not allow the security ministries to be in the hands of groups that have militias. And we will also work hard not to let those sectarian people head these ministries," said Thafir al-Ani, a spokesman of the main Sunni Arab bloc. "We will absolutely not allow this."
But Shiites say they must control those key ministries to ensure that members of their majority community are protected.
"We have red lines that cannot be crossed in regard to electoral weight and the interest of national security," Hadi al-Amri, head of the Shiite Badr militia. "We will never surrender these. We are subjected to a daily slaughter. We will not relinquish security portfolios."
For months, each side has accused the other of targeting its civilians — Sunnis say the Shiite-run Interior Ministry runs death squads. Shiites say Sunni extremists target Shiites with car bombings and suicide attacks.
U.S. officials believe the Dec. 15 election, in which Sunni Arabs scored more than a threefold increase in parliament seats after boycotting the last vote, offers a historic opportunity to build the kind of inclusive government capable of winning trust from the minority and undermining the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
If that happens, the next stage could be the phased withdrawal of substantial numbers of American and other foreign troops.
All that depends on a deal among the Iraqis themselves. Failure would sharpen sectarian tensions, fuel the insurgency and force Washington to do some hard thinking about the impact of a major troop withdrawal.
A Sunni Arab now runs the Defense Ministry, which controls the army. More controversial is the Interior Ministry, which runs the police and paramilitary commandos.
Interior Ministry Bayan Jabr is a top official in the biggest Shiite religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. He is also a former official of the Badr militia, which once fought Saddam Hussein's forces from bases in Iran.
Sunni politicians have not publicly demanded the Interior Ministry post for themselves. But they don't want it in the hands of someone closely identified with the Shiite religious parties either.
However, the alliance of Shiite religious parties won 128 of the 275 parliament seats, the biggest single bloc. Shiite politicians believe that gives them the right to the major say in security issues.
"The Interior Ministry is not sectarian," al-Amri said. "We are the victims of sectarianism. We did not kill anyone because he was a Sunni. The Shiites are killed because they are Shiites. We are the victims."
But the Shiites are coming under strong U.S. and international pressure to compromise with the Sunnis. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.N. special envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi have delivered that message in meetings with top Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and others.
"A monopoly by this group or that group on certain portfolios may not be in the better interests of Iraq," U.N. spokesman Said Arikat told The Associated Press.
Adnan al-Dulaimi, a major Sunni Arab politician, fears that if an agreement cannot be reached soon, the momentum for bringing the Sunni community into the political process will be lost.
He told reporters that Iraqi military operations such as Friday's raids in western Baghdad were widely seen among Sunni Arabs as a provocation.
"When the next government is formed, we will try to end such problems," al-Dulaimi said. "But we are afraid that the peoples' patience will run out and the country will slip into turmoil and disaster."
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Citation: Robert H. Reid. "Shiite-Sunni Security Tensions Rising," Associated Press, 29 January 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_the_showdown
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