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| Iraq |
| Sunni spokesman sees himself as Iraq's Gerry Adams |
| 2005-10-09 |
| As Iraqis and Americans seek ways to talk Sunni Arab hardliners into laying down their arms and joining a peaceful political process, some speak wistfully of finding an "Iraqi Gerry Adams" across the negotiating table. Opponents will scoff, but one man who sees himself in the mould of the Irish Republican leader is Saleh al-Mutlak, a businessman and former bureaucrat, and perhaps the best known of the numerous Sunni politicians who claim to speak for their people -- though many Sunnis boycotted January's election. "I'm near to the resistance, in the way I speak, in my attitudes," he said in an interview this week at his Baghdad office as he called for a U.S. ceasefire and fulminated against the constitution that will be put to a referendum on Saturday. "I'm not far from them," he said of the nationalist rebels fighting the U.S. occupation and the Shi'ite-led government Washington is backing in Iraq. "But I'm not part of them." "We need (a) Gerry Adams in Iraq," said Mutlak, whose formal role is that of spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue, a leading Sunni Arab group. "I find myself well qualified for this," he added, listing his Shi'ite wife and friends as well as years of what he calls opposition to Saddam Hussein after his expulsion from the Baath party in 1977 as credentials for helping heal Iraq's divisions. "Our political programme is close to the resistance," Mutlak said. "The only difference is we don't carry guns." Not everyone sees him as a force for peace; Iraqi troops raided his office last week, arresting his guards. Bullet holes and shattered glass around a pile of copies of the constitution bear witness to their visit, and to the state of Iraqi politics. "There is no freedom in Iraq ... to achieve your aims by telling people what you want," Mutlak said, accusing Shi'ite Islamists and U.S. forces of muzzling Sunni politicians. Affable and animated, his hands, moustache and high forehead in perpetual motion, Mutlak is an articulate spokesman, fluent in English since university days at Aberdeen in the 1970s. But Shi'ites, Kurds and diplomats who faced him in ill-tempered negotiations on the constitution dismiss him as an intransigent extremist speaking up for fellow ex-Baathists. "I'm an ex-Baathist," he says, emphasising the "ex", though his expulsion -- for defending Shi'ites, he says -- was followed by a good career in Iraq's state-supervised agriculture sector. Sitting next to the flag and map that are symbols of the united Iraq he says is threatened by a looming civil war with "chauvinist" Kurds and "pro-Iranian" Shi'ite Islamists, Mutlak calls himself a peaceful nationalist, sacrificing himself out of patriotism and not seeking office. Dapper in a suit and tie, he describes himself as an academic, farmer and businessman: "I have enough money to live anywhere in the world," he said. "I'm in politics ... to serve my country." Unlike Kurds and exiled Shi'ites, who forged parties against Saddam, Sunnis were left disorganised by his fall, throwing the field open for new leaders. Lines between moderates and fighters are blurred in places like Mutlak's native Falluja. Ending the U.S. occupation and ensuring influence and prosperity for the once dominant 20-percent minority are common goals. For all his public good humour and insistence on peaceful dialogue, he makes no bones about sharing the aims of the armed rebels -- though not the al Qaeda Islamists who have been their allies. Nor does he reject comparison with the old "gun in one hand, ballot in the other" tactics of Adams's Irish Republicans. Ambivalence toward the guerrillas' violence has irritated officials of the U.S.-led coalition. But Mutlak does agree the fighting should end: "The problem is it doesn't work," he said. And he is ready to work with the Americans against al Qaeda. Yet, as in Belfast, making democracy work across sectarian schism is fraught; Mutlak is uncompromising in his disdain for many opponents and his belief the Sunnis must defend themselves. Exile or death will be their fate, he said, if the Shi'ite Islamist parties now in power are returned in December. "They will not leave any of us in Iraq," Mutlak said. "We will either have to be outside Iraq -- or under the earth." But, citing secular former prime minister Iyad Allawi -- another former Baathist -- as one Shi'ite politician he could work with, Mutlak said an Iraqi peace process was possible. "We must find a political solution," he said. "Everybody is getting tired in Iraq." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 And finally, Gerry Adams is an apologist for terrorist hoodlums, which makes him either one of them, or their poodle. Neither role strikes me as very desirable. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-09 21:55 |
| #1 How did the man manage to amass enough money to live anywhere on earth when he was out of favour with the Ba'athists rulers for so long? For that matter, how did he manage a good career in Iraq's state-supervised agriculture sector? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-09 21:48 |