News Analysis
By Ali Latif
June 12, 2006
Zarqawi’s assassination
There
has been a great deal of discussion surrounding the importance
of Zarqawi’s
killing in the battle against terrorism, but
what is potentially more significant is what led to his
death. It was a tip-off from Iraqi sources that led to his
location and subsequent demise. This may reflect increased
trust by Iraq's Sunni community towards the central government
and security services, which means that their mass participation
in the December elections was not a mere blip but reflective
of a change in attitude away from supporting violence towards
politics.
What
last week’s development highlights is the need for
genuine national reconciliation that will allow all citizens
of Iraq to feel represented and protected by their government.
This confidence in the state will allow Iraqis to provide
the intelligence that the security forces and coalition
troops need in order to defeat the terrorists inside Iraq.
The Prime Minister's release
of prisoners last week is a good practical start
for the reconciliation process but an extensive and coherent
initiative will need to be pursued in order to achieve the
results the government and coalition require.
Dealing
with the militias
Iraq’s
intelligence chief, Major General Mohammed al-Shahwani’s
warning against merging
militias with the security forces carries certain
validity. Thus far attempts at merging the militias have
failed to genuinely extricate them from their political
masters and there have been serious concerns about their
role in the sectarian flare-ups since the Samarra bombing.
There
have been two major components missing from previous governments’
policies in dealing with the militias. A will to create
the political environment for Iraqi parties to genuinely
give up their militias and once this has been achieved,
there needed to be a satisfactory framework in place where
militia members would be identified, dispersed and monitored
within the Iraqi security services that they join. Militia
members would lose their previous paymasters and operate
in multi-ethnic units, thereby preventing them operating
under the official cover that Major Shahwani has fears about.
Iraqi
PM’s policy plan
Seizing
the moment of both the Zarqawi killing and the completion
of the national-unity government, PM al-Maliki presented
a detailed and ambitious agenda for Iraq in an Op-Ed for
the Washington
Post.
