Monday, Oct 17, 2005
Divisions in Sunni ranks
Peter Beaumont
Many in Iraq's minority feel that after boycotts the time is ripe for compromise. That is why some voted for the constitution on Saturday.
GENERAL ISA Abdel Mahmoud al-Jibouri is a walking contradiction. Once a poster boy for the military of the old Iraq, a popular commander who led the first tanks during the invasion of Kuwait, he was one of the first Iraqi casualties of the 1991 Gulf war, injured when his tank was attacked by an allied warplane.
These days, however, there are Iraqis who would like to kill him for his prominent role as the security coordinator for the new Government of Iraq in the city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home-town.
In his office in Tikrit, he has the new constitution on his desk. It is a constitution that, like many Sunnis in his office, he has eloquently opposed. Last week Gen. Isa changed his mind. "I feel happier with the final draft," he said. "In previous versions there were articles I felt unhappy with. I planned to vote no and reject it. Now I will vote yes. I was looking for the truth and I found it in this constitution."
Most in Gen. Isa's own office — former soldiers and security officials of the old regime — have not enjoyed a similar conversion. In Saturday's referendum, they still voted no, citing concerns over nationality, federalism, de-Ba'athification and the sharing of resources between Iraq's different areas. All are familiar arguments from the months of negotiations that have gone before when Sunni politics seemed monolithic and unbroken. But in seven days it has been transformed, and it is not only the General who has swapped horses.
Amid accusations of base treachery by hardline rejectionists, the Iraqi Islamic party has also changed its mind, persuaded by a final amendment to the constitution that allows articles to be re-examined by a new Government if the National Assembly desires. Persuaded that the alternative is worsening sectarian violence, the Islamic party has chosen the way of compromise. But new tensions have emerged in the Sunni community.
As old obediences have broken down, tentative new shoots of independence have emerged.
>From a near-universal boycott in last January's national elections, Sunnis have begun splitting along lines of affiliation to political parties and religious endowments, between urban and rural, and by gender, age, and education.
Ruwada Ryad Jaber, 22, and her friend Amna Saad, 20, who works at the Ministry of Health, have both read the Constitution and decided to vote yes. They are well-educated and independent young women. "I feel comfortable with it," says Amna. "But opinions are split within my family. My friends will vote yes like me — people who are young and educated." Amna did not vote in January, although Tikrit saw one of the higher shares of Sunni voting turnout, because her father said it was too dangerous.
It is an independence that is not shared in all areas of the Sunni Triangle. The villages of Ruad and 14 Ramadan lie a little off Highway One, south of Balad and north of the insurgent stronghold of Tarmiya. To the U.S. troops who patrol this road it is known as "IED Alley" for the "improvised explosive devices" or homemade bombs whose blasts pockmark its carriageway. Residents of both these villages have been active in attacks.
In his Ruad home, Uday Hamid Hudaier says he will be guided in how — or even if — he votes by what the Association of Muslim Scholars in Baghdad decides. A farmer, with a son in the army, he said last week: "They told us to go out and register to vote. Now they will tell us how to vote." He concedes, as most Sunnis now do, that not voting in January was a serious mistake, leaving the community disenfranchised at the crucial moment of the constitution's negotiation.
Promises and pitfalls
The emergence of a genuine debate among Sunnis holds both promises and pitfalls. A significant Sunni engagement in Iraq's troubled political process as it approaches December's fresh elections holds the promise of representation for a significant minority. And for those seeking an end to insurgent violence, Sunni political engagement is seen as the key.
The nature of that choice was articulated last week by Ayad al-Sammaraie of the Iraqi Islamic party, as he formally announced his party's decision flanked by Shia and Kurdish Government representatives. Outlining his party's reservations, he explained that compromise was necessary for a stable Iraq, for the country to move forward politically and to save it from "further turmoil."
The risks involved for the Iraqi Islamic party since it declared support for the "yes" camp are already apparent. The party's offices have been threatened in Baghdad and attacked in Fallujah.
Even among the most hardline rejectionists of the constitution, among them supporters of the Muslim Scholars Association, the voice of nationalist elements in the insurgency, officials have complained privately about Al-Qaeda's threat to disrupt the electoral process, describing it as foreign interference in their affairs.
If there is a lasting impact of the Sunni debate over the constitution, it is in the realisation that the Sunni voice in the new Iraq will only be heard through a more pragmatic approach than through the previous boycotts and rejection. And lacking a clear Sunni leader at present, many, ironically, are turning to a Shia politician to safeguard their future.
Ask in Tikrit or in the villages along Highway One, or in Baghdad, who Sunnis will throw their weight behind in December and many will name the former interim Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia who believes in a strong central government. Many Sunnis see him as their best bet to diminish the power of the Shia religious parties who dominate the government.
- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.