The curfew imposed on Mosul yesterday following the deadliest attack on Americans since the invasion, reveals the paucity of options for both Iraqis and the US, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif The Tuesday attack on Camp Merez, a US military base south-west of Mosul, is what Imam Jawad Al-Khalissi, a respected Shia leader, means when he speaks of national resistance. The Mosul attack, which left at least 22 dead, including 19 US soldiers, and 55 wounded, is seen by most analysts as marking a qualitative shift in Iraqi resistance operations against US occupation forces. Al-Khalissi, a staunch opponent of the occupation, views attacks which "do not target the occupiers" as bringing Iraq "a step closer to the civil war the flames of which the Americans have been fanning". The bombing of holy sites in Najaf and Karbala earlier this week, which claimed the lives of 65 Iraqi civilians, among them women and children, fall within this latter category. Targeting Najaf and Karbala appears intended to precipitate divisions among the country's Sunni and Shia population. The Mosul attack, on the other hand, exposes the failure of American attempts to crush the resistance. The attacks came only six weeks before the country goes to the polls, raising fresh questions over the viability of holding elections. While election officials insist that 75 per cent of Iraq is safe, many question this assessment given that cities such as Mosul, Iraq's third largest, do not possess a single police station. The political process, Iraqi observers argue, has already had a polarising effect on Iraqi society. Large sections of the Sunni constituency remain alienated from the election process and key Sunni parties have decided to boycott the January poll. Shia parties, on the other hand, have shown themselves to be well-organised political operators. They view the forthcoming elections as an opportunity to right the historic mistake when, in the 1920s, they shunned elections. The result was eight decades spent on the margins of Iraqi political life. Given the context, it was inevitable that sectarian tensions would colour the political process. While many of Iraq's political and religious leaders have urged restraint in the face of the targeting of holy sites in Najaf and Karbala and the assassination of Shia and Sunni clerics, anger simmers beneath the surface. Fear that a sectarian war could be sparked by such incidents has led Iraq's Sunni and Shia leaders to make a collective call to defend the unity of Iraq. Murtada Al-Kashmiri, spokesperson for Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, said those behind the twin attack on Najaf and Karbala do not want Iraq to be free, united or stable. "They are the same forces that want to sow sectarian strife among Muslims and want Muslims to turn against one another. They are the enemies of Iraq and of Muslims," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview. Laith Kubba, a US-based Iraqi prominent analyst, has qualms using the term civil war to describe the violence taking place in Iraq. "The escalation remains political in nature. It can take a sectarian tinge but it is not at its core either religious or sectarian," Kubba told the Weekly While the attacks on Iraqi police and US occupation forces have, Kubba says, a certain logic, attacks targeting Iraqi civilians raise important questions about the identity of the perpetrators. The dominant perception among Iraqi officials and most Shia leaders is that the attacks are intended to frighten Iraqis into boycotting the political process. But Kubba sees a larger scheme at work. He believes that attempts to promote strife between Sunni and Shia constitute an attempt to strip Iraq of its Arab identity. While Iyad Allawi, Iraqi prime minister, has vowed to "break the back" of those who carried out the Najaf and Karbala attacks, without well trained troops under his command it is difficult to see how he might keep his promise. The Mosul attack has thrown into doubt the future course of US policy in Iraq. In the US an increasing number of people are calling for the administration to review its strategy in Iraq and seek an exit. Writing this month in Foreign Affairs James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, urged the US administration to pull out its troops as soon as it can because "the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the US can win." Kubba, who is close to those handling the Iraq file in the American administration, believes that the debate is likely to expand after the Iraqi elections are over. The new Iraqi government is expected to request that troops be withdrawn but this cannot take place before the Iraqi army is re-built, says Kubba who, like most observers, is far from optimistic that the elections will provide a safety valve for the simmering discontent. "This coming election will not lead to a new social contract or a constitution that reflects the will of Iraqis. It would not be wise to assume that it will lead to stability," he said. The electoral system, he believes, needs to be readjusted in order to ensure that the outcome of elections will be representative. In the event of a Sunni boycott the newly elected national assembly should work on rectifying the under-representation of Iraq's Sunnis. "If large sections of Sunnis remain on the periphery of the political process, the political process is bound to fail and the legitimacy of any government will remain in question," Kubba said. (see p.6)
