Can Iraq Be Reconciled?

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Borzou Daraghai of the Los Angeles Times has the best coverage I’ve seen yet of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s new “national reconciliation plan” for Iraq. The plan, according to the Washington Post, was watered down after “several revisions”— after some hectoring on the part of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, perhaps?—but it still contains an amnesty measure for insurgents along with proposals to build up the Iraqi security forces and dismantle the Shiite militias that are causing such havoc nowadays.

In other words, it’s an attempt to convince disgruntled Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and start participating in Iraq’s fragile political system, which currently looks more like rule by gangsters and kleptocrats than it does any sort of democracy. Still, it’s a step. So what’s wrong with it? Most crucially, as Daraghai reports, the reconciliation plan is vague about laying down markers for U.S. troop withdrawal:

By diluting any language about a troop withdrawal, the proposal undermines itself, said Wamidh Nadhmi, a Baghdad political scientist sympathetic to the Sunni cause.

“If I were the resistance, I wouldn’t talk with a government that depended on a foreign army,” he said. “I would talk with the foreign army.”

That seems exactly right. The basic dynamic in Iraq is this: A lot of Sunni insurgents are waging war precisely because they fear the U.S. wants to stay in Iraq forever. The Bush administration, for its part, really does want to stay in Iraq forever (proposals for slight troop reductions notwithstanding) and has been planning permanent bases around the country for some time—the sort of thing guaranteed to infuriate insurgents. Meanwhile, the administration appears to be dissuading Maliki from setting concrete conditions or dates for a U.S. drawdown.

The problem here is that it’s unlikely that insurgents will see any point in negotiating with or supporting the Iraqi government if Maliki can’t promise to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Withdrawal is really the main issue here, and any “reconciliation” plan that doesn’t address that isn’t likely to succeed. There’s also this:

Some Iraqi critics also said the plan failed to address the changing nature of the violence, which they argue has turned more and more from a nationalist fight against U.S. occupation into a sectarian war waged between Arab-backed Sunni extremists and Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

“The whole thing is mixed up,” said Sheik Ali Abdullah, leader of the Hamad Jasim, a branch of the Dulaimi tribe in Al Anbar. “We’re giving Maliki a full opportunity, but we’re sure this government will fail.”…

Other Shiites characterized the plan as a way to call the insurgents’ bluff, forcing disgruntled nationalists to distinguish themselves from the Islamic extremists or former Hussein loyalists who oppose the new Iraqi state. If some Sunnis continue to fight because they want the Americans out, here’s an opening to push forth that agenda, said Fadhil Shara, another lawmaker in the Shiite coalition.

So the plan doesn’t appear to address Sunni fears about the new Shiite-dominated government adequately. It’s likely that many Sunnis will reject it for that reason. But many Shiites, for their part, seem to be seeing this as an excuse to give Sunnis one last chance before they really take the gloves off. That hardly bodes well. But it certainly doesn’t look like a dispute the U.S. military can solve by staying in Iraq—at this point, the Bush administration appears to be making things worse by refusing to say whether the U.S. will ever leave. And since Bush doesn’t seem to want to leave Iraq, a clear answer one way or the other isn’t likely to be forthcoming.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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