Baghdad Sunnis celebrated the birth of the New Year much the same as we did here in the states. Fireworks, street celebrations, and tons of young people dancing and snapping pictures of themselves celebrating. Hope for a good year to come, albeit guarded, enveloped the crowds. This could be the year...
Unfortunately, that's where the similarities ended.
At a few ticks past midnight, the anticlimactic end of the night came in the form of a sudden and complete electricity blackout. It immediately left most of Baghdad in darkness, and most of its residents confounded and crestfallen.
Well, at least the fireworks display went off without a hitch. The rockets snapped, crackled, popped; lighting up the sky even more spectacularly than it had before the blackout occurred.
Little did the would-be revelers know that the New Years Day blackout had only foreshadowed what was to come. Later that day, reality struck again... hard. A suicide bomber walked into the condolence service of Hussein Jasim, a retired police officer, and while people were mourning the deceased officer, the suicide bomber ignited his explosives, killing another 36 Iraqis. The deceased Jasim had himself been a victim of a terrorist attack on December 28. That particular attack, which took place in a crowded market in Tayaren Square, left 14 people dead.
This bloody welcome of 2008 reminded Iraqis that they shouldn't get their hopes up too high. On Christmas day, another suicide bomber had killed 10 people at a funeral in Baqouba, south of Baghdad. While all of this was happening, a massive clampdown took place in al-Dour, another Iraqi city, where hundreds of young people were arrested on suspicion of hiding Saddam Hussein's former henchman, Ibrahim Izzat al-Douri, the current secretary general of the disbanded Iraqi Ba'ath Party.
The clampdown in al-Dour only made things worse for affected Sunnis. Nerves had already been frayed; the dour mood a result of commemorating the first anniversary of the death of their former president in December 2006. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in London for medical checkups after suffering "mild exhaustion." Maliki is blamed by most Iraqis for the deteriorating security condition and the timing for his trip couldn’t have been worse. It’s been a pattern of sorts; the many absences of the prime minister at particularly trying times around Baghdad in the past have conveyed to the Iraqis a certain irreverence on Maliki’s part, for the violence that continues to permeate throughout the city.
To the horror of many Iraqis, last year when Saddam was being hanged, Maliki hosted a gala event on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest son. The Sunnis considered it an arrogant and disrespectful act against all Sunnis, and it lead to a series of inner city attacks that left 80 people dead in one day. Compounding the animosity, Maliki flew to Britain as the killings continued, while leaving his underlings to announce a limited amnesty for Sunnis when he had promised a more liberal policy.
The Asia Times tells the sad tale:
A "crippled amnesty" most Iraqis are saying is like no amnesty at all. Maliki's bill excludes most of the 45,000 Iraqis currently in jail (20,000 are held by Iraqi authorities and 25,000 are in US custody). Only 5,000 people would be released since Maliki excludes those held in US custody, those imprisoned for crimes like "terrorism" and those who had held senior office under Saddam.
Passing the "crippled amnesty" to Parliament means that Sunnis will have to wait some time to see its results. Parliament is notorious for the slowness of its procedures, with bills like those calling on former Ba'athists to resume their jobs in the civil service gathering dust from lack of proper legislation.
It is unknown if Maliki was following, while in London, the numerous reports that came out regarding the 2007 death toll in Iraq. The highly reliable Iraqi Body Count said 24,000 civilians were killed. The Associated Press put the number at 18,610. Maliki's own Ministry of Interior revealed 16,232 civilian deaths, 432 soldiers and 1,300 policemen. In 2006, the numbers had been 12,371 civilian deaths, 603 soldiers and 1,224 policemen.
The figures are still alarming. Last month alone, a total of 691 people were killed, which authorities claim is a grand achievement compared to a year ago when 2,309 were killed. Iraqi authorities are pointing to the figures as a relative improvement in the security situation thanks to the prime minister's security plan, launched in 2007 with the help of the U.S. Military "surge" of an additional 30,000 troops. The Ministry of Interior claims that these numbers spell out victory for Maliki, along with the fact that 75% of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been eradicated. But the Sunnis know better. While the rooting out of al-Qaeda was due primarily to the U.S. military paying bribe money to the Sunni sheiks in Anbar province, scant other progress has come about because of the "surge."
Consequently, the real reasons for "success" are quite different than the ones pushed by both Bush and Maliki:
• The cooperation of Iran.
• The 6-month freeze on all paramilitary activity by the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.
• U.S. troops involved in less confrontational activity.
Needless to say, U.S. taxpayer dollars are paying for the newly instituted indoctrination responsible for the Sunni turnaround regarding al-Qaeda. But it hasn’t been easy. Currently numbering approximately 30,000, the so-called "Anbar Awakening Council" has openly scoffed at U.S. efforts to control them through money. It is no secret amongst Sunnis in Baghdad that their Anbar cousins plan on turning their acquired American wealth and guns back on U.S. troops and the Mahdi army alike once the al-Qaeda problem is solved.
Such rhetoric, along with a salary of US$300 for anybody combating al-Qaeda with the Awakening Council, is the real reason behind the drop in violence - not Maliki. The prime minister after all is much opposed to these US-backed Sunni groups, claiming that once they rid themselves of al-Qaeda they will turn to fighting Shi'ites. In response to what they are doing, he has ordered Shi'ite militias to flock into the police and armed forces. This will legitimize their arms in conflict when sectarian violence once again erupts between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
Responding to the calls of clerics like Sheikh Dohan, bin Laden himself came out and criticized the Awakening Council in an audio message broadcast last week, warning Sunnis against joining these US-backed organizations. Those who did join, he said, "have betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in the life and afterlife."
Ordinary Sunnis, meanwhile, are confused as who to believe. Both Sunni tribesmen and bin Laden speak to them about "betrayal", "shame" and "disgrace". The determining factors are how much each party pays and how much networking and indoctrination is done by each party. There is one thing that all Sunnis agree on, both those who are working with and against al-Qaeda: the era of Maliki is worse than that of Saddam.
Besides the lack of political representation, the Sunnis complain of a variety of regressed hardships that did not exist under Saddam’s rule. They offer a few examples as proof:
• Electricity flows through Baghdad only one hour every three days. Under Saddam the power went off only two hours every night and two hours during the daytime.
• A gas cylinder under Saddam used to cost 1,500 dinars (US$1.20) whereas now it has become 16,000 dinars.
• Oil - during this heavy winter - has reached 20,000 dinars.
• One liter of gasoline equals $1, whereas under Saddam it used to be 3 cents per liter.
The Gulf News, a Dubai-based newspaper, ran a story quoting several Sunnis on the anniversary of Saddam’s execution. One said that: "I am an employee at the Ministry of Industry. My salary is 400,000 dinars, which is a big salary compared to Saddam's time when I used to get 4,000 dinars. But with inflation, I practically make less than what I used to."
An academic, who requested that his name remain anonymous, spoke to Asia Times Online, saying: "Some would say that under Saddam we were below zero and that we have now improved. I don't agree with that. If we were at zero [level] under Saddam, we have sunk to below zero today."
Speaking from his new home in Damascus, where he has fled terrorist bombings in his own country, the young man added: "I long for the days of Saddam Hussein. If you stayed away from politics, you lived a decent and respectable life. Nowadays, you are a target for terrorist attacks whether you are a grocer, a barber, a painter or a politician. Nobody is safe in this Iraq." He wrapped up: "My mother's generation used to go out in Baghdad wearing mini-skirts in the 1950s. Do you think they, or your people in their 20s, can do that today without being accused of being infidels?"
Serving as the 800 pound gorilla and a source of deep mistrust and animosity in the Sunni community remains today as it did this time last year -- the issue of oil-rich Kirkuk province, which faces a referendum to see whether it should be incorporated into Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sunnis are dead set against the Kurds taking control of it – at any cost. They say that not only would it provide the impetus in a breakaway for the Shiites in southern Iraq; it would also cause the central government in Baghdad to weaken and become even more ineffective for Sunnis.
In spite of the Baghdad government, the semi-autonomous government of Kurdistan recently started signing oil extraction deals with foreign countries, of which the U.S. is not one. To date, upwards of 20 contracts have been authorized by the Kurds, prompting the Maliki administration’s Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani to deem the contract "illegal."
There is no doubt that nearly half the Sunni community openly and strongly backs the Turkish air raids on northern Iraq. It’s also clear that the other half of the Sunnis support them tacitly. Since that stance is at odds with Maliki, the Kurds continue to threaten to break away from the overwhelmingly Shiite cabinet. As a result, the beleaguered prime minister must walk a fine tightrope. He has to appease the regional Sunnis, including Turkey, by working toward rapprochement with Sunnis -- which is also a U.S. requirement – while placating Iran by protecting the Shiites who are not militiamen or part of Sadr’s Mahdi army.
And, if all that wasn’t difficult enough, Maliki also has to please the Kurds by granting them Kirkuk -- which would certainly ignite more violence in many other parts of the country -- while at the same time he's promising to give ordinary, non-sectarian Iraqis and Christians better security overall.
Maliki has proven over and over again to everyone but George W. Bush that since he came to power in 2006, he has not, cannot now -- nor will he in the future -- deliver on any of the aforementioned goals.
Then again, perhaps, he’ll come up with multiple grand solutions on one of his many trips to London.
Yeah right.
Here’s the kicker...
Sadr’s order for a cessation of violence ends in February.
The worst is yet to come.
Peace