25 July 2008
Tarek al-Hashemi, the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, holds the highest Sunni political position in the current political setup as vice president and plays a major role in determining which way Sunni politics go. His most recent achievement is negotiating the return of Sunni ministers to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government this week, after a boycott that lasted for almost a year over differences on security policies. But challenging issues lie ahead for the minority Sunnis in the current transitional postwar and pre-full-independence period, including: disputes over the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, claimed by the Kurds and Arabs; efforts by Shiites to establish a semi-independent region in southern Iraq, home to the country’s giant oil fields; and a possible withdrawal of US troops, which they fear will boost Iran’s support to Shiites.
“I am in favor of a scheduled US troop withdrawal from Iraq over an agreed period of time, during which Iraq should be cleansed of all militias and the Iraqi army should be built up,” al-Hashemi told Energy Compass last week in his tightly secured office inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. “Our ultimate objective is to see all foreign troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, but first we have to ensure that we have a capable military power with national allegiance. The timeline is dependant on the time needed to have our forces ready, which is a decision to be made by the army leadership in relation to its ability to ensure internal security and protect Iraq against external threats,” he added. Iraqi officials told Energy Compass that the Iraqi government is pushing for a 2010 timeline for withdrawal, while the US has been insisting on 2013. Al-Hashemi abstained from expressing a preferred date.
The national allegiance issue refers to Sunni apprehension of Iranian influence in collusion with Iraqi Shiites. Sunni Arabs were the biggest losers when the regime changed in 2003, opening the way for the majority Shiites to run the country for the first time in modern Iraqi history. With Tehran moving in full force to back fellow Shiites in Iraq and neighboring Sunni Arab regimes abstaining from engaging with the new political forces in power, Sunni Arabs in Iraq chose a course of action that on one hand tried to fight the new status quo through insurgency against US forces and successive Shiite-led administrations, and on the other hand led to a boycott of the political process. That included the January 2005 vote for an interim parliament and the drafting of the constitution and the referendum that ratified it. But they voted in strength in the December 2005 parliamentary elections and won 58 seats in the 275-member assembly.
A major turning point took place in late 2006, when Sunni Arab tribal leaders decided to take a stand against al-Qaeda’s indiscriminate killing of civilians and joined forces with the US military to expel the group from their provinces, starting with their stronghold in Anbar in western Iraq, and then in other areas. Now, with the return of the six ministers of the National Accordance Front, the main Sunni block in which Hashemi’s Iraqi Islamic Party plays a major role, to the cabinet and taking the second position of a deputy prime minister — the first being held by a Kurd — they are gearing up for the upcoming political battles that they see as determinants in safeguarding the unity of Iraq despite the federal political system agreed by all.
“I don’t have anything against granting regions more freedoms, and I support decentralization, but Iraq is in need of a strong centralized government. Federalism should be based on the administrative requirements of the state — not on ethnic and sectarian foundations. Anything else would lead to the division of Iraq and the end of it as a state,” al-Hashemi said. He rejects the Shiite argument for a southern region similar to the Kurdish region in the north and says this will push Sunnis to declare their own region as well, which would be a de facto division of the country into three mini-states of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
The establishment of a southern region would grant Shiites control over the bulk of Iraq’s oil fields, which include giants such as Rumaila, Majnoon and Nahr bin Umar. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told Energy Compass in Baghdad last week that his ministry is forging ahead with setting up a new regional oil company in Missan province in southeastern Iraq. It will be followed by another regional company in Thi Qar governorate, also in southern Iraq, once the governorate’s oil fields are producing enough. Iraqi oil experts in Baghdad warn of granting each governorate its own oil company and its own oil fields at a time when disputes continue over whether the much-delayed draft oil and gas law should give more power to the regions or to the federal government.
Al-Hashemi says the ongoing disputes over the draft oil and gas law between Baghdad and the Kurdish region have their roots in differences over the constitution, which he says was drafted and voted on hastily. “Our view is that the differences over the oil and gas law will remain as long as the constitution is not amended with regards to the authorities it grants the regions at the expense of the central government,” he adds.
The Arab-Kurdish dispute over Kirkuk flared up this week when the Iraqi parliament passed a provincial elections bill paving the way for a new poll, originally planned for October, which is expected to integrate Sunnis further into the system. The bill singles out Kirkuk among the country’s 18 provinces for postponement of elections and states that each ethnic or sectarian group gets a set allocation of seats and that voting is between individual candidates from those groups. The Kurds boycotted the vote, and the three-member presidency council ultimately vetoed the legislation.
Ahead of the vote on the bill, which was later vetoed by the presidency council, al-Hashemi insisted that “Kirkuk is an Arab province whether they [Kurds] like it or not. There is no national consensus over a solution to this dispute, and that’s why Kirkuk has to be treated differently from other provinces.” The constitution stipulated that a referendum on Kirkuk be held by the end of 2007 to decide whether to integrate it and its giant oil field into the autonomous Kurdish region, but that vote was delayed after UN intervention.
By Ruba Husari, Baghdad
(Published in Energy Compass July 25, 2008)