HARITH Al-Dhari — a national and religious leader in Iraq during the American occupation and in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime — died earlier this week without accomplishing any of his aspirations. Like many of the Sunni leaders, he emerged after the invasion due to the leadership vacuum that became very clear after Saddam’s long-held dominance over the political stage. But Dhari could not understand the changes taking place in Iraq and the region after Saddam’s fall.
He led a lost battle against the US occupation, causing serious damage to his community, the Sunnis, and all of Iraq. I was at odds with him, but that did not prevent me from hosting him at our Al-Arabiya offices in Dubai. I did not mind him criticizing the channel and me during our meeting. Yet he did not hesitate to help us in difficult times when our colleagues were kidnapped; he deployed all possible efforts and even saved their lives.
Despite all that, there was always a disagreement between us regarding political concepts. This is something that I totally understand, because I believe — and so did he — the old adage that “you cannot guide whom you love.”
It was not surprising that former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki pursued and threatened to imprison him. Al-Maliki used his powers to hunt down his opponents, whether Sunnis and Shiites. He labeled all those who disagree or compete with him as terrorists. This is why Dhari spent most of his last years in exile between Qatar and Jordan. What he was unable to understand, along a large number of Sunnis in Iraq, is that there is a new regime under construction after the fall of Saddam and he cannot stop it. Dhari was not affiliated with Saddam’s regime; he had many sheikhs affiliated to him. He considered that he was descendant of a family of national history.
The real goal of the US was to change the regime and establish an alternative one. Some Sunnis — and they are few — understood the situation and agreed to get involved in it. Some others, including Dhari and at a later stage an association of senior Muslim scholars association, thought that they would be able to stop the change and thus they opposed it.
What happened is that a world power decided to establish a new regime; community leaders had limited options: Either work with it and seek changes from the inside, or reject it. Those who decided to resist had no authority or regional support.
The sole support was from Assad’s regime in Syria, which had different purposes when he took advantage of the Iraqi resistance and received thousands of Al-Qaeda fighters and brought them to Iraq. Dhari had no sectarian tendencies, as his opponents claimed. He initiated his anti-American activity in 2004 through a visit to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
His decision to support the resistance was emotionally subjective, so he missed the opportunity of the Sunnis to participate in building the new Iraq, the chance to achieve their rights in the Constitution, and their chance to politically participate in the parliamentary elections. Consequently, others managed to marginalize the Sunnis’ role and build unbalanced institutions that triggered injustice and limited the authority to few people, especially during Al-Maliki’s recent years. Despite all what Dhari witnessed and was accused of, he was one of the first who criticized and refused to accept the declaration of the IS “caliphate.” He considered it to be against his Iraq.
Maybe if there was some alertness regarding the nature of the change in the country and its inevitability, and maybe if Sunni leaders had the wisdom in perceiving what was happening, history would have changed instead of wasting years in rejecting and boycotting the inevitable. It’s in everybody’s interest to establish a new regime in Iraq that should be based on participation rather than ethnic and sectarian rivalry.
