Radical Shiite legislators banging their fists on the desks in Parliament during the debate yesterday to rehabilitate former Baathists, was not particularly edifying, but at least this display of anger was taking place in the legislature. Their leader Moqtada Sadr has currently suspended the violent street operations of his Mehdi Army militia.
A door of opportunity does seem to be opening in Iraq. The US-led surge has had some effect on the violence but the major change has been the realization by Sunni tribal leaders that Al-Qaeda elements they had once supported had no interest in the future of Iraq. The terrorists are thus currently on the defensive. The return of thousands of Iraqi exiles from Syria seems to bear out a cautiously growing confidence, even though bomb attacks continue and sectarian murders, though less, still occur.
The question is whether or not Iraq parliamentarians can push through the opening door. The radical Shiite fury at a law which, they believe, would pardon the Baathist thugs that kept Saddam in power is understandable. They want justice for the suffering their community endured. They accept many Baathist functionaries joined the party merely as a way to survive. It is however the likelihood that the real criminals — the torturers and hoodlums who carried out Saddam’s orders to perpetuate his brutal dictatorship — will escape prosecution, that these legislators find unacceptable. They want revenge and they fear they will not get it.
Yet have they considered the real price of this revenge? Indeed, have they thought of the probability they will obtain no satisfaction whatsoever if they kill this proposed Justice and Accountability Law? If the legislation fails, then so will a major chance to build reconciliation, shut the evil of Al-Qaeda out of Iraqi national life and get on with the job of economic and political recovery. In exchange for letting a few thousand of Saddam’s henchmen go free, Iraq itself has the opportunity to escape from its past and really concentrate on its future. The punishment these evil men so richly deserve will not however advance the cause of a unified Iraq by a single inch.
And there is a further folly to blocking the Justice and Accountability Law. If this important part of the platform of national reconciliation is lost, the future bodes ill. There will be no unified state that represents the interests of all Iraqis. The different communities will fall back on themselves. In such circumstances, the men on whom Sadr’s MPs wish to wreak revenge will go unpunished anyway. But meanwhile, Iraq could be heading for disaster, the Shiites along with the Sunnis and the Kurds.
There comes a time surely when all responsible politicians must weigh between a smaller and a greater justice. In an ideal world, police torturers and killers would receive the punishment they deserve. But Iraq is not an ideal world. Is it not the greater justice that the country should liberate itself from the desire for revenge and look instead to the future?
