Azzaman, Iraq
The Invaders 'Know They are Hated'

Earlier this week, a conference billed as an 'Iraqi conciliation conference' was held in Baghdad. According to these two commentaries from Iraq's Azzaman newspaper, the conference was held chiefly to 'mislead' the United States into thinking it can still piece the country together, and to persuade the White House not to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. But one thing all factions and groups agree on, according the author – is that they 'hate the American invaders,' and that the Americans know it.

December 16 and 18, 2006
Azzaman - Iraq- Original Article (Arabic)    

The Baghdad reconciliation conference is unlikely to change conditions in this country, so torn is it by violence and sectarian strife.

The hastily organized conference comes in the aftermath of the Baker-Hamilton report. The goal of the Iraqi factions in attendance is to again mislead the White House into believing that it has the power to bring the country together.

So-called moderate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups in attendance have all voiced concern over the report and would be happy if Washington brushed its recommendations aside. If implemented, the movers and shakers at the conference including influential Shiite and Kurdish factions would see their influence wane. Which is why they rushed to hold the meeting only weeks before U.S. President George Bush announces his new Iraq strategy.

For analysts closely monitoring Iraq, there is little difference between this "reconciliation" gathering and many others that have been held in the years since the American invasion. The words are different but the faces are the same, and everyone knows that deeds and not words are what really counts.

The forces that make up the backbone of the national resistance against U.S. occupation forces are not represented, and neither are the former Baathists who are said to be behind many of the attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops. Also absent are opposition groups who met recently in Istanbul and denounced the government as illegitimate.

So here we have assembled precisely the same groups, blocs and factions that Iraqis are already sick to death of. The Baathists who did attend the conference had no role under Saddam and at present lack any popular base.

In his opening address, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on former members of Saddam's military to return Watch , but the overdue move is bound to fall on deaf ears at this stage. And most of Saddam's senior officers have either left the country or been liquidated by militiamen of factional leaders attending the conference.

The Iraqi landscape, political and otherwise, is so complicated now that it is well beyond the capacity of a conference like this to sort out. And the people who are essentially to blame are those attending this conference, in addition to the powers that have occupied the country.

This is the predominant fear: there seems to be nothing that Iraqi or occupation leaders can do to reconcile this nation, after they themselves helped divide it along sectarian, ethnic and religious lines. Every ethnic, sectarian or religious faction in Iraq has a foreign sponsor -including those taking part in the current conference. And every neighboring country has its own interests which it tries to advance, regardless of the means.

For narrow and short-sighted reasons, Washington only points its finger at Iran and Syria. One wonders what interests Syria might have in Iraq - although those of Iran are all too obvious. But be that as it may, the U.S. is turning a blind eye to the armed groups which receive direct or indirect aid from neighboring countries other than Iran and Syria.

The terror in Iraq is of such a scale that no sane person could blame it all on Iran and Syria, since the spiraling violence is not confined to Shiite factions and their militias. Sunnis, Kurds and Turkmen are also involved. And all have their own illegal militias. If those sponsoring the reconciliation conference are serious, the first decision for them to take – which would please a majority of Iraqis – would be for them to disband their militias.

ARMY SEEMS IMPOTENT

There is no shortage of men in the new Iraqi army, but nevertheless, it is incapable of quelling the marauding militiamen in even a single district of Baghdad. The militia warlords – some of whom are regrettably taking part in the conference - are using the patchwork of Iraqi sects, religious and ethnic groups to achieve the dirty aims of themselves and their foreign masters.

The Turks publicly back what they call the "legitimate" aspirations of Turkmen in Iraq. The Sunni countries bordering Iraq sympathize and back what they see as their hard-pressed fellow Muslims in Iraq.

So all of Iraq's neighbors, whether pro- or anti-U.S., are involved through these factions and the militias they control. None of them would survive without financial and material support from abroad.

But these other countries - and above all the U.S. occupiers - remain without a clue regarding the mosaic of Iraqi society, and are ignorant about some of the premises upon which Iraqi society exists.

For example, to most of the outside world, Shiites are Arabs who live mainly in parts of Baghdad and predominantly in southern Iraq. But that isn't quite true. The Shebeks as well as a large Kurdish community called the Fili are Shiites, as are the majority of Turkmen. These groups live predominantly in northern Iraq and close to some of the world’s largest oil fields.

Another example of how the world and particularly the U.S. gets it wrong is the assumption that Iraq's Sunnis are predominantly found in the so-called Sunni-Triangle. Again, that is not the whole truth. A majority of Kurds are Sunni and many senior Sunni clerics and leaders of the Iraqi resistance are Kurds.

Where do the American invaders stand? Toward which side of the fence do they lean? The trouble is there never was such a fence dividing the Iraqi people – and as soon as the U.S. invaders and their lackeys erected it, the country went to the dogs.

For this reason most factions now hate the U.S. invaders. In the meantime, the invaders trust no one, despite their ostensible support for those in the current government. The invaders know they are hated, which is why they fear establishing a strong Iraqi Army equipped with modern weaponry. They fear - and they are right – that this army will turn its guns against them.

And who wouldn't? Iraqis well remember the 13 years of U.S.-supported sanctions that impoverished most of them, malnourished their families and resulted in the deaths of nearly 500,000 children, according to U.N. reports. Their occupation has ruined their country, turning it into a wasteland where people literally "butcher" one another, with at least 100 innocent Iraqis killed in Baghdad every day.

This is the backdrop against which this conference is being held. One would like to leave room for optimism, but I'm afraid the invaders and their lackeys have erased the word from the Iraqi lexicon.

Reconciliation Conference Ends in Failure

December 18, 2006

The reconciliation conference that the government convened to bring disparate Iraqi groups together has failed. In a bid to hide the failure, the organizers said that the meeting was only the first in a series of gatherings aimed at reconciling Iraqis.

There was no consensus among the groups which attended the conference. Some factions withdrew as conferees debated the future while other key factions decided not to attend at all, particularly groups openly hostile toward the U.S.

The failure of the conference is yet another blow to American strategy. President George Bush was keen to see the conference reach at least some form of agreement so that he could sell his new Iraq strategy to American public.

Now the President has been denied any encouraging sign that Iraqis are moving to put their house in order, and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has proven once again that it cannot or will not bring about national reconciliation.

There is little the U.S. can do to turn events around. The deployment of additional U.S. troops will send a wrong signal to armed groups bent on forcing the Americans to "cut and run."

The government banned independent reporters from covering the conference’s proceedings, limiting the coverage to state-run media. Analysts said that the ban was another indication that the authorities want to keep differences among the groups and factions attending the gathering under wraps.

Sources close to the conference told Azzaman that there were more points of difference than agreement. The powerful faction of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr opted not to take part, vowing to boycott any future gathering that calls for accommodating the Baathists.

The influential Iraqi Muslim Scholars Commission, which reportedly wields immense power among Iraqi Sunnis and whose members currently comprise the brunt of anti-U.S. resistance, now regards the U.S.-backed government as illegal, and has called for scrapping the entire political process, since it was created in the presence of American occupation troops.

VIDEO FROM DUBAI: 'U.S. BROKE

THE CAGE, BUT BIRD CANNOT FLY'

ABU DHABI TV, Dubai: Excerpts excerpts from an interview with Iraqi Member of Parliament, Iyad Jamal Al-Din, Seprember 10, 00:02:31, Via MEMRI

"Blessed be America for giving Saddam a good kick, sending him straight into the abyss of jail. Blessed be America for giving Mula Omar a good slap, sending him straight into the garbage bin of history and into the dunghills of oblivion. ... Along came America and broke the cage open, but the bird does not know how to fly, because it has never used its wings. "

Iraqi Parliamentarian Iyad Jamal Al-Din