Irak, fazioni, sunniti, USA Nyt 06-07-17
Lotta tra fazioni – Con un giro di boa i sunniti
vogliono che gli Usa rimangano in Irak
EDWARD WONG e DEXTER
FILKINS
Il significativo cambiamento di posizione da parte dei
leader sunniti potrebbe influenzare il progetti della Casa Bianca di riduzione
delle truppe in Irak (134 000) e servire agli americani a trattare con elementi dell’opposizione.
L’accordo che si sta prospettando suscita la reazione degli
sciiti.
Il maggior promotore della strategia americana di
coinvolgimento degli arabi sunniti nel processo politico (con repressine delle
milizie sollecitazione di amnistia per alcuni guerriglieri sunniti) è stato l’ambasciatore
americano in Irak, Khalilzad.
In luglio i soldati americani hanno attuato operazioni
contro lo sciita esercito del Madhi. Il 7 luglio americani e truppe irachene
hanno colpito un palazzo sciita di Baghdad dove pare abbiano catturato un
leader dell’esercito del Madhi, Abu Deraa; la pressione degli americani sul
Madhi procura loro il consenso degli arabi sunniti.
–
Dall’intensificarsi
degli scontri in febbraio fino ai recenti attacchi
sanguinosi di Baghdad e di diverse regioni centrali dell’Irak, diversi leader
sunniti che
si opponevano in precedenza alla presenza americana hanno chiesto in incontri
informali nelle ultime settimane di essere difesi dai soldati americani contro
gli attacchi delle milizie e delle forze governative sciite, alcuni giungono fino a chiedere un maggior numero di truppe
americane.
Il funzionario per il diritti civili dell’Iraqi Islamic
Party, un potente gruppo sunnita: «I crimini commessi dagli americani sono solo
1/100 di quelli commessi dalle milizie».
La richiesta proviene anche da alcuni leader della provincia
di Anbar, controllata dai sunniti.
I leader sunniti di Dawra, un sobborgo di Baghdad, hanno
concluso recentemente un accordo con i commandos sciiti del posto per cui le
forze irachene dovranno essere accompagnate da forze americane per qualsiasi incursione
contro una moschea o un’abitazione sunnita. I leader della Sunni Endowment di
Adhamiya (Fondazione sunnita per l’amministrazione delle moschee), hanno
chiesto al primo ministro al-Maliki di estendere l’accordo di Dawra a tutta
Baghdad.
Nella provincia di Dyiala all’O.d.G. scontri tra sunniti e
l’esercito del Madhi; la città di Muqdadiya è un epicentro d’omicidi di
fazione.
–
Uno dei due vice-presidenti
iracheni, il sunnita Tariq al-Hashemi, che fino ad un anno fa’ chiedeva
l’immediato ritiro degli americani, chiede ora che gli americani non se ne
vadano, teme un vuoto di sicurezza e la guerra civile.
I sunniti accusano gli Usa di aver rafforzato l’Iran con la propria
invasione, ma li considerano anche un baluardo contro eventuali azioni iraniane
in Irak.
Nyt 06-07-17
Sectarian
Strife – In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
and DEXTER FILKINS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 16 — As sectarian
violence soars, many Sunni
Arab political and religious leaders once staunchly opposed to the American
presence here are now saying they need American troops to protect them from the
rampages of Shiite militias and Shiite-run government forces.
The pleas from the Sunni Arab leaders have been
growing in intensity since an eruption of sectarian bloodletting in February,
but they have reached a new
pitch in recent days as Shiite militiamen have brazenly shot dead groups of
Sunni civilians in broad daylight in Baghdad and other mixed areas of central
Iraq.
The Sunnis also view the Americans as a “bulwark against Iranian actions
here,” a senior American diplomat said. Sunni
politicians have made their viewpoints known to the Americans through informal discussions in recent
weeks.
The Sunni Arab leaders say they have no
newfound love for the Americans. Many say they still sympathize with the
insurgency and despise the
Bush administration and the fact that the invasion has helped strengthen the
power of neighboring Iran, which backs the ruling Shiite parties.
But the Sunni leaders have dropped
demands for a quick withdrawal of American troops. Many now ask for little more
than a timetable. A few Sunni
leaders even say they want more American soldiers on the ground to help contain
the widening chaos.
The new stance is one of the most
significant shifts in attitude since the war began. It could influence White House plans for a reduction
of the 134,000 troops here and help the Americans expand dialogue with elements
of the insurgency. But the budding accommodation is already stirring a reaction
among the Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of the population but
were brutally ruled for decades by the Sunnis.
–
In Adhamiya, a neighborhood in north Baghdad, Sunni
insurgents once fought street to street with American troops. Now, mortars
fired by Shiite militias rain down several times a week, and armed watch groups
have set up barricades to stop drive-by attacks by black-clad Shiite fighters. So when an American convoy rolled in recently, a remarkable
message rang out from the loudspeakers of the Abu Hanifa Mosque, where Saddam
Hussein made his last public appearance before the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
“The American Army is coming with the
Iraqi Army — do not shoot,” the voice said, echoing through streets still
filled with supporters of Mr. Hussein. “They are here to help you.”
Sheik Abdul Wahab al-Adhami, an imam at the mosque, said later in an
interview: “Look at what the militias are doing even while we have the American
forces here. Imagine what would happen if they left.”
Even in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, where
insurgents are carrying out a vicious guerrilla war against foreign troops, a handful of leaders are asking
American commanders to rein in Iraqi paramilitary units. Sheiks in
Falluja often complain to American officers there of harassment, raids or
indiscriminate shooting by Iraqi forces.
A year ago, the party of Tariq al-Hashemi, a hard-line Sunni Arab who is
one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, was calling for the
immediate withdrawal of foreign troops.
“The situation is different now,” Mr.
Hashemi said. “I don’t want the Americans to say bye-bye. Tomorrow, if they
were to leave the country, there would be a security vacuum, and that would
lead inevitably to civil war.”
–
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, has been
at the forefront of American efforts to bring Sunni Arabs into the political
process. Part of that strategy is to crack down on
Shiite militias and push for amnesty for some guerrillas.
–
This month the American military has stepped up operations
against the Mahdi Army, a volatile Shiite militia, and
the top American commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said last Wednesday that
the Americans would hunt down “death squads” that are a driving force behind
the rising bloodshed.
Some Shiite leaders deride the American
policy toward Sunnis as appeasement. “This strategy will destroy their goal of
establishing democracy in Iraq,” said Abbas al-Bayati, a prominent Shiite
legislator. “Compromising with the insurgency will encourage the insurgents to
do more and more violence in the region.”
Investigations into possible wrongdoing
by American troops in two major cases — the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha
last November, and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the killing of
her family in Mahmudiya in March — have ignited anger among Sunnis, but not
nearly to the same degree as they might have in 2004, when the Abu Ghraib
prisoner scandal emerged. But back then, Iraq had not crept to the brink of
full-scale civil war.
Of much greater concern now is the
massacre of up to 50 Sunni civilians in the Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad on
the morning of July 9, when Shiite militiamen dragged people from cars and
homes and shot them in the head. Some families fled the area for a makeshift
tent camp in the backyard of a mosque.
–
“The problem is that American
crimes are only a hundredth of the crimes committed by the militias,” said Omar
al-Jubouri, the human rights officer for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a powerful
Sunni group that still considers itself the vanguard of political resistance to
the Americans. “It’s like one hair compared to all the other hairs on a camel.”
“We want to tell the American people to
increase the presence of the Americans here, to control the situation,” he
added.
–
Sunni Arab leaders in the
strife-ridden neighborhood of Dawra recently secured an explicit agreement with
Shiite-led commandos based there that says the Iraqi forces will not raid a
Sunni mosque or private home without being accompanied by American forces. A
new brigade of Iraqi forces has just moved in, and the Sunnis are likely to try
to reach the same agreement with them.
–
A similar but more informal
agreement exists in Adhamiya. Leaders of the Sunni Endowment, an Iraqi
organization that helps administer Sunni mosques, say they have asked the Iraqi
prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to extend the Dawra agreement to all of
Baghdad.
“If the Iraqi forces come without
American soldiers, people will shoot at them, because we’ll know they’re
militias,” said Sheik Akrim al-Dulaimi, the head imam of the Holy Mecca Mosque
in Dawra. “Civilians don’t trust the government.”
The Sunni fear of militias and
government forces — and a growing affinity for American soldiers — extends to
other mixed areas of Iraq.
–
In Diyala Province, Sunni fighters
and members of the Mahdi Army battle regularly. The town of Muqdadiya there is an epicenter of sectarian
killings. Last Wednesday, at least 20 people were abducted from a bus
station and later found killed.
In late June, gunmen set afire 17 shops
in the town center as the Iraqi Army stood by, said Hamdi Hassoun, a provincial
council member and a Sunni Arab.
“We have called on the Americans for
help, we have called on the prime minister’s office,” he said. “The
infiltration of the police and army is common.”
–
But the Americans are slow to
give aid, he said. Residents of troubled areas are seeing fewer American
patrols now than a year ago, adding to a sense of anxiety and lawlessness. “The
American forces don’t target those who are not attacking them,” Mr. Hassoun
said. “They don’t care about the militias unless the militias attack them.”
The Americans insist they are striking
at the militias. On July 7, American and Iraqi troops stormed a building in a
Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing or wounding 30 to 40 gunmen and capturing a
high-level Shiite militia commander. Residents said the man was Abu Deraa, a
leader of the Mahdi Army, which answers to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada
al-Sadr.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a
military spokesman, said it was clear that civilians were suffering heavily
from “the activities of these illegal armed groups through murder,
intimidation, kidnappings and everything else.”
He added, “We’ve made a very conscious
decision here in the last few weeks to deal with them just as severely as we
can.”
If the American military continues to
press the Mahdi Army, that could win more support from the Sunni Arabs.
Regardless, Sunni leaders appear to be reaching out more to the Americans, said
Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, in an interview.
After all, he said, the Sunnis finally
chose to dive into the political process by participating in the parliamentary
elections of December 2005, after boycotting an earlier set of elections.
“This is the biggest change that has
happened here,” the ambassador said of the shift in Sunni attitudes toward the
American presence in Iraq. “A lot of Sunnis realized that they made a mistake
in not participating in the elections in January 2005. Now, they are beginning
to see the payoff.”
A telling sign of the new dynamic is the
growing tension between some Shiite leaders and the ambassador. When he came to
Baghdad a year ago, Mr. Khalilzad was so warmly embraced by Shiite leaders that
they often referred to him by a Shiite nickname, Abu Ali. Now, the same Shiites
refer to him as Abu Omar, a Sunni nickname.
Khalid al-Ansary and Ali Adeeb
contributed reporting for this article.
New York Times