(NEW YORK) MintPress – Iraq ended 2012 just as it started the year, right after the departure of U.S. troops: In full crisis mode.
The country is facing a major confrontation between the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki and a minority Sunni opposition, exposing sectarian strife that has erupted despite — or as many believe, because of — hundreds of millions of American dollars and hundreds of thousands of civilian and military deaths.
Iraq was ruled by the Sunni-dominated Baath Party until 2003, when a U.S.-led invasion toppled President Saddam Hussein and resulted in the majority Shiites coming to power.
At the outset of 2012, al-Maliki issued an arrest warrant on terrorism charges against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, who then went into self-imposed exile, first in the Kurdish north and then in Turkey.
After a trial in absentia, Hashemi was handed three death sentences and now lives in Istanbul, where he is protected by Turkish guards.
More recently, the army raided the office of another senior Sunni politician, Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi, in the western province of al-Anbar and arrested 10 of his bodyguards on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.
That triggered a widespread protest movement, with demonstrations and rallies beginning in Anbar and spreading to the ancient cities of Samarra and Nineveh on Dec. 26. Protesters charged the Shiite authorities with targeting their communities.
In one demonstration, tens of thousands of Sunnis blocked Iraq’s main trade route to neighboring Syria and Jordan.
On New Year’s Eve, a series of nationwide shootings and bombings left 28 people dead and nearly 100 wounded.
Britain-based monitoring group Iraq Body Count put the overall death toll for 2012 at 4,471, more than double the official figures.
It warned in its annual report that “the country remains in a state of low-level war” and said “2012 has been more consistent with an entrenched conflict than with any transformation in the security situation for Iraqis in the first year since the formal withdrawal of U.S. troops.”
Ongoing resistance
Protesters have now set up a makeshift camp near the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, according to the BBC, with tents bearing the banners of Sunni tribes and delegations from different cities.
“We warn the sectarian government against dragging the country into sectarian war,” says the banner on the Fallujah Youth Council tent.
“Al-Boudiab tribe demands that the Maliki government release the Sunni men and women of Iraq from the government’s Persian jails,” reads the banner on another.
Many protesters allege that young women imprisoned by al-Maliki’s forces are raped in prison.
“It’s now a question of honor,” said Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleiman, one of the most powerful tribal leaders in Anbar. “Not politics, not the constitution, not even the United Nations can resolve it. We want the women released here in the square.”
Other demands have included that al-Maliki stop being a puppet of neighboring Shiite-led Iran; that the banning of the Baath Party end and former Baathists be allowed to re-enter public life; and that the government provide better services.
Renowned historian, political analyst and professor at the University of Michigan Juan Cole writes in his Informed Comment blog, “Some of the slogans and demands of the demonstrations have evinced nostalgia for Sunni rule for Iraq, and there have even been rumors that the crowds want to fly the Saddam Hussein version of the Iraqi flag.”
Tangled web
That, of course, raises questions about the extent to which the latest unrest is being orchestrated by al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI).
Immediately following the U.S. pullout, AQI tried to exploit the widening political divide through a string of attacks targeting Shiites.
Earlier this summer, it launched a campaign dubbed “Breaking the Walls,” which aimed at retaking strongholds from which it was driven by the American military.
AQI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi promised a violent campaign against the Iraqi government focused on bombing military installations and police posts, assassinating Iraqi judges and prosecutors and breaking Islamist prisoners out of Iraqi jails.
At the time, Sabah al-Nuaman, a spokesman for the Iraqi government’s counterterrorism services, acknowledged that Iraqi forces have been struggling to contain AQI, especially in intercepting technical communications such as cell phone calls, radio signals and Internet messages, since the U.S. military’s departure.
“The Iraqi efforts to combat terrorists groups have been negatively affected by the U.S. pullout, but we are trying our best to compensate and develop our own capabilities,” al-Nuaman said.
It’s not clear how successful those have been. In early December, state-run al-Iraqiya TV said al-Baghdadi was arrested by the country’s National Counterterrorism Force in northern Baghdad.
But senior officials suggested the man arrested was another senior leader of the group, and
said they were not revealing his name for security reasons.
Wild card
Meanwhile, the waters are further muddied by support for fresh protests expressed by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — al Maliki’s political rival — on Tuesday.
Sadr, who was speaking in the holy city of Najaf, said that the prime minister bears “full responsibility” for the unrest in Iraq.
He compared the anti-government demonstrations to the reform movements that have swept across much of the Arab world in the past couple of years.
“We are with the demonstrators, and Parliament must be with them, not against them,” he said “The legitimate demands of the demonstrators, by which people know what they want, should be met.”
The cleric also said that he was willing to go to Anbar to take part in protests.
It is possible that Sadr is trying to gauge the sentiment on the street ahead of provincial elections in the spring.
In any case, his remarks are bound to throw fuel on the fire. “The Iraqi spring is coming,” he warned.
2013 isn’t likely to be any more peaceful than 2012.