Iraq's bitterly divided political leadership came together Sept. 30 to denounce a non-binding US Senate resolution approved last week that endorses the decentralization of Iraq through the establishment of semi-autonomous regions. That same day, the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement of its own criticizing the resolution, which advocates a "federal system" with a weak central government and strong Sunni Arab, Shi'ite and Kurdish regions. "The Congress adopted this proposal based on an incorrect reading and unrealistic estimations of the history, present and future of Iraq," said Izzat al-Shahbandar, a member of ex-prime minister Ayad Allawi's parliament bloc. "It represents a dangerous precedent to establishing the nature of the relationship between Iraq and the USA, and shows the Congress as if it were planning for a long-term occupation by their country’s troops." The statement was also signed by Iraq's leading Shi'ite parties and the main Sunni Arab bloc. The US Embassy's highly unusual statement said the resolution would seriously harm Iraq's future stability.
The Senate resolution, approved 75-23 Sept. 26, has its origin in a proposal by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), and Council of Foreign Relations president emeritus Leslie Gelb [2]. It has met with a particularly harsh response by Iraq's Sunnis. "We refuse the resolutions which decide Iraq’s destiny from outside Iraq," said Hashim Taie, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the parliament's main Sunni bloc. "This is a dangerous partitioning based on sectarianism and ethnicity."
Radical Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters also joined in denouncing the measure. "This project is the strategic option for the American administration in its failure [in] igniting a sectarian war inside Iraq," said Sadr spokesman Nasr Rubaie said. "They started to search for a replacement, which is to divide Iraq." (Los Angeles Times [3], Oct. 1)
Well, the Sadr forces have certainly been vigorously participants in Iraq's sectarian war. Maybe this Seante measure will have a paradoxically salubrious effect—uniting Iraqis against it, and painting those who would engage in sectarian violence as pawns of an imperialist conspiracy!
Count this as another blow against the humbled neocons [4]. With any luck, the hour has passed for their hubristic agendas [5] to divide Iraq (and ultimately the rest of the Middle East [6]), which have sparked much paranoia [7]...
However, what of the Kurds? The LAT account does not say whether their leaders joined in the statement denouncing the Senate measure...
See our last posts on Iraq, the Kurds [8] and the sectarian war [9].
