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May 27, 2006

Secular Iraqis Unimpressed by New Government

by Aaron Glantz

Many secular Iraqis have been expressing their displeasure with the new Iraqi government that was sworn-in Saturday and introduced with much fanfare by politicians in Washington, Baghdad, and London this week.

"All Iraqis know this government is totally irrelevant to the realities that they're facing," said Houzan Mahmoud, the international representative of the left-wing Iraqi Freedom Congress, an umbrella organization of workers' and women's groups that opposes both the U.S.-led occupation and Islamist control of Iraq.

"It's a government of rightist militias who are terrorizing people on the ground," she added, noting the government is dominated by the same religious, Shi'ite, political parties that have been in power since 2005.

Since then, representatives of those parties' militias have been taking to the streets beating up religious minorities and people who sell alcohol while forcing women to cover their heads.

"These are militias representing groups based on religious sects and ethnic backgrounds, just engaged in trying to increase their own power," Mahmoud said.

Iraqi politicians say the new government will be able to deliver greater sovereignty and security for the people of Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that Iraq could take over security in most of the country within 18 months.

"There is already an agreement, and a plan has been submitted to hand over security issues in every Iraqi city," Maliki told reporters in Baghdad Monday. "The process will be started in June with the handover of the southern provinces of Samawa and Amara."

By the end of the year, Maliki said, Iraqi forces could be in control of every province except Baghdad and Anbar in the western desert.

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is a member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, told Reuters he had convinced British Prime Minister Tony Blair of "the necessity of announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupying troops and told him frankly that Iraqis have a right to know when the last British or American soldier will leave Iraq."

But secular groups are doubtful the Iraqi police and military will be able to restore security.

According to a United Nations report released this week, at least 2,500 Iraqis were killed in March and April, while 85,000 were forced to flee their homes.

Citing statistics supplied by the International Organization of Migration, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq stated that 14,302 families had been displaced since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Domed Askareyeah shrine in Samarra.

The national association of Sunni clergymen, the Association of Muslim Scholars, complained this week that 1,200 Sunni Arab families from the Shi'ite-controlled southern oil city, Basra, have been forced out.

"They are getting abducted and killed on a daily basis," the North American representative of Iraq's trade union movement, Amjad Ali Jawahary, said of Basra's Sunni population. "Just recently, 18 people were abducted, and they found them dead somewhere else. The head of one of the tribes was killed. The Governing Council, which is primarily Shi'ite, wants to get rid of the Sunnis from there, and then the Sunnis strike back."

The New York-based women's rights group MADRE, which works with feminist groups in Iraq, is calling for the deployment of a United Nations-led peacekeeping force and an immediate end to the U.S. occupation. They maintain that, unlike sectarian militias and U.S. occupying forces, the United Nations will be considered a legitimate authority by many governments and people in the Middle East.

Such a force, the group maintains, would help dispel perceptions of a U.S./European/Israeli conspiracy against Muslims that is currently being mobilized to garner support for militarism and a reactionary social agenda in many countries of the world.

MADRE's Middle East coordinator, Yifat Suskind, told OneWorld she "hasn't seen any indication that turnover to this authority will mean protection for human rights and basic security."

"It's hard to look at the situation in Iraq and feel any kind of hope at all," she added.

"But people in this country should know that there are people in Iraq besides the insurgents and people who are affiliated with the Islamic forces. There are people who care about genuine democracy and human rights and who are struggling against tremendous odds to build a future for their communities with a separation between mosque and state."

(OneWorld)

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