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Bush's Call for
Ouster of Iraq's Prime Minister Widens Rift with Shias
By PATRICK COCKBURN in Arbil, Iraq.
President George W Bush has made it
clear that he does not want Ibrahim al-Jaafari to remain prime
minister of Iraq in a move likely to increase hostility between
the US and the Shia community.
Mr Bush has written to the
Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shi'ite Alliance
asking him to nominate somebody else for the post. " The
Americans are very firm about this," said a senior official.
"They don't want Jaafari at any price."
Friction between the Americans
and the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's 27 million population,
escalated sharply after at least 16 Shi'ites were killed in the
al-Mustafa mosque by Iraqi and American Special Forces on Sunday
night. Many Shia believe that the US was shocked by, and is not
ready to accept, the success of the Shia Alliance in the election
on December 15.
The prolonged negotiations
on forming a new national unity government has served to underline
the fissures dividing Shia, Sunni and Kurds. The Alliance has
called for security to be handed over to the Iraqi government
in the wake of the al-Mustafa incident.
The government led by Mr Jaafari
for over a year is a Shi'ite-Kurdish coalition, but the Kurds
accuse Mr Jaafari of failing to honour agreements on the return
of Kurds to Kirkuk and other places from which they were expelled
by Saddam Hussein.
Dr Mahmoud Othman, one of the
Kurdish negotiators engaged in trying to form the new government,
told me yesterday: "Jaafari has been in power one year and
he has failed. He's not fit for the job and we should try somebody
else." He criticized Mr Jaafari for acting as if he only
represented one party and
not the whole country. Since he became prime minister last year
the Ministry of the Interior has been accused of running anti-Sunni
death squads.
Unless he chooses to step down
Mr Jaafari may not be finished since he is still the chosen Shia
candidate and other Shia leaders may not want to break ranks.
The unity of the Shia Alliance is also supported by Grand Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani and the Hawza (the religious hierarchy) as well
as by the Iranians.
The prolonged and rancorous
negotiations on the make up of the new Iraqi government gives
a false impression that it will be a powerful body. In reality
central government authority is now very limited in much of Baghdad,
Basra and Mosul, the three largest cities in the country.
There is almost a complete
breakdown in law and order. Often criminals wear police uniforms.
Three groups of gunmen disguised as police yesterday kidnapped
24 Iraqis working in a currency exchange and two electronic stores.
Kidnapping has been rife since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
in 2003 but the kidnap gangs are operating ever more brazenly,
snatching many people at the same time. Earlier this month gunmen
dressed as police commandos seized 50 men from a security company.
The objective of the kidnappers
is money. Many business and professional people have fled the
country. One senior political figure said this week: " A
kidnap gang seized my nephew. There was nothing he could do to
resist because they boxed in his car with seven cars filled with
gunmen. They asked for $200,000 but settled for $20,000."
It is often not clear if criminals
are disguised as police or are real policemen engaged in criminal
activities. Even a large number of bodyguards may not be sufficient
protection. A wealthy banker from Basra and his son were kidnapped
in Baghdad by men dressed as police who cordoned off the street
where they lived and killed seven of their bodyguards.
Iraqi society is dissolving
because of the breakdown of law and order. Sami Mudhafar, Higher
Education and Scientific Research Minister, said recently that
he wanted to lay to rest exaggerated accounts of the number of
university professors murdered in the last three years. He said
the true figure was only 89 professors killed over three years,
Mr Mudhafar's other piece of comforting news was that there was
no murder campaign directed against the Iraqi intelligentsia
and they were simply being killed because they lived in Iraq.
In addition to the professors 311 teachers have been killed in
the last four months. He added that the government was too weak
to defend anybody: "I myself was target of an assassination
attempt recently and the government has failed to obtain any
lead on the party behind it."
Many students no longer go
to universities that are riven by struggles between parties.
"The students and their professors are in a very bad psychological
situation," Abdulamir Hayder of Baghdad University was quoted
as saying. "The only aim is how to flee to a foreign country
to escape assassination or threats."
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