BAGHDAD, 25 October 2006 — The leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite bloc called yesterday for the country to be divided into federal zones, to the dismay of minority Sunnis who fear losing out on Iraq’s vast oil wealth.
Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told hundreds of supporters that a federal system with only loose central control would prevent the return of dictatorship.
“Federalism will guarantee that the injustice of the past will not revisit our children nor our grandchildren,” Hakim said in a speech for the Eid Al-Fitr holidays marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Hakim and his supporters argue that in order to prevent a resurgence of Sunni dominance of Iraq, such as that which prevailed under Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime, the Shiites of south and central Iraq must have self-rule.
He accused opponents of federalism of wanting “to bring back dictatorship and unjust central power,” while insisting that SCIRI did not want to destroy or partition Iraq but to strengthen it. Hakim’s Sunni opponents and many Shiites, including radical leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, fear SCIRI’s vision of an eight-province autonomous Shiite zone would put the Iranian-backed party in command of Iraq’s oil wealth.
Iraq’s northern Kurdish region is also oil-rich, and while Kurdish leaders there have stopped calling for complete independence they are attached to the degree of autonomy they have enjoyed since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq’s post-Saddam constitution, passed by referendum in October 2005, describes the country as a “democratic, federal, representative republic” but a decision on what kind of federal system to use has yet to be taken.
Earlier this month Iraq’s Parliament adopted a law to institutionalize federalism within 18 months at the earliest to give time to amend the constitution to ease Sunni concerns about the distribution of national wealth.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meanwhile warned that Iraq would break up if nothing were done to unify the country. “If there is no breakthrough and real unity does not begin, this situation (break-up) will become reality,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency yesterday.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Monday said it was a decision for Iraqis themselves about whether they wanted to continue as a single state or divide along ethnic lines. She said that while unity was the most important short-term objective, in the long run Iraqis had had enough of arbitrary borders being imposed on them from outside, in apparent reference to the country’s colonial past.
In Najaf, Moqtada Al-Sadr yesterday called for an end to the sectarian violence ravaging the country’s Shiite and Sunni communities, on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr. “I totally reject any Shiite-Shiite or Shiite-Sunni killings, whatever their motive,” the influential leader told his followers in an address marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. “My only enemy is the occupier and the Nawasib,” he said, referring to Sunni extremists responsible for reprisal killings against Shiites. “Aggression against any Iraqi is an aggression against me.”
Earlier this month, Sadr issued a statement saying that if rumors about his followers taking part in such killings were true, he would denounce them. He has also called on his militia to “exert their efforts to return the Sunnis and Shiites who have been displaced to their homes.”
Meanwhile, gunmen killed two Iraqi policemen in the southern city of Amara yester, a Muslim holiday marred by tensions following clashes between police and Shiite militias, a security source said.
The source, asking not to be named, said Capt. Hussein Salah of the criminal police was gunned down at his home, in an attack that also left two of his brothers wounded. A colleague in the same branch of the police, Ala Ghleim, was killed under similar circumstances, he said.
The Iraqi army declared a curfew in the Shiite city on Monday after two days of violence last week in which at least 24 people were killed and the Mahdi Army militia burned down two police stations. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki issued a warning to the militias, particularly those in Amara’s Meysan province, “to refrain from any armed action that violates security.”
Three more US soldiers have been killed in attacks and fighting with rebels in Iraq, the American military announced yesterday, raising its death toll for the month of October to 89.
