Might the Sunni Arabs relent?

Iraq

May 26th 2005 BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

Amid the violence, some signs of hope

FOR a good week, a rumour has been buzzing around Baghdad that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most bloodthirsty of foreign jihadis organising suicide-bombers and beheadings, has been wounded or captured. It is hard to tell whether an announcement on a website apparently affiliated to his Iraqi branch of the al-Qaeda movement, calling on Muslims to pray for his recovery, is genuine, though American forces have certainly been particularly active in the Euphrates valley towns thought to be his main refuge. The Jordanian Mr Zarqawi (who many Iraqis say is a figment of American imagination) has been a co-ordinator for non-Iraqi money and volunteers coming into Iraq. But even if he were put out of action for good, the insurgency would certainly go on apace—as it has, with even greater venom, since Iraq's new government took office last month.

Much more hopeful, for the new order, was a meeting last week in Baghdad of 1,000-plus Sunni Arab politicians and tribal and religious leaders, who gave one of the strongest signals yet that Iraq's former ruling minority, at the heart of the insurgency, is pondering participation in peaceful politics. Many delegates admitted that their boycott of January's election was a mistake. Others, including members of the conservative Muslim Scholars' Board, which had urged that boycott and endorsed the insurgency, said that Sunnis should vote next time. The group roundly condemned terror attacks on civilians.

At the same time, however, they upheld “legitimate resistance” against foreign forces in Iraq and called for Iraq's new interior minister, Bayan Jaber, to resign. At least one tribal sheikh said he would call his followers to jihad unless sectarian violence in his district subsided.

Such mixed signals show that Iraq's Sunni Arabs, perhaps a fifth of the total populace, are in a quandary. They particularly dislike the appointment of Mr Jaber, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which many Sunnis consider an Iranian cat's paw. And they blame death-squads made up of SCIRI's Badr militias and the interior ministry's Wolf Brigade for the recent murders of half a dozen Sunni clerics. One member of the Scholars' Board's governing council, later found dead, was reportedly grabbed from his mosque by uniformed troops, while another sheikh was said to have been shot by Wolf Brigade commandos while sleeping on his roof.

In the first flush of anger over these killings, some Sunnis, such as the board's secretary-general, Hareth al-Dhari, threatened to turn their backs on peaceful politics. But others argue that it is their past reluctance to get involved that has left Sunnis so vulnerable. This debate is taking place in many Sunni towns, where people chafe under raids, cordons, curfews, bombardments and the deployment of Shia or Kurdish troops from elsewhere. Sunni towns like Samarra and Ramadi witness divisions between older residents and merchants, who want to accommodate themselves to the new order in order to halt the violence, and younger men and former military officers and Baathists, who say that foreign occupation—or Shia domination—must be fought at all costs.

For the moment, after a rapid rise in sectarian tension earlier this month, the moderates seem to be gaining ground. Shia clergy called for restraint; the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, vowed to crack down on sectarian killers with an “iron fist”; and even the firebrand Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, got on to the peace train, declaring on television that he would try to allay sectarian grievances. The Sunnis issued a rare denunciation of the killing of a Shia sheikh, and Badr militiamen and clerics on the Scholars' Board met quietly to discuss their differences. Both sides, says an American official, “peered over the edge and decided that's really where they don't want to go”.

So far, however, there is little evidence that even the more prominent Sunni sheikhs have a decisive influence over the insurgents. Still, say the Americans, every time a Sunni cleric goes on television to question the wisdom of fighting on, some more insurgents will think about laying down their guns. Meanwhile, sectarian tension is still acute, with reports of communal clashes between Sunnis and Shias in the northern town of Tel Afar.

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