Over the past two decades, peace negotiations around the world have succeeded only when rebel forces are allowed to come in from the cold, says Mark Schneider, vice president of the International Crisis Group in Washington, which has been closely involved in ending wars from Latin America to Africa to the Balkans
NEWS ANALYSIS
Offensive stalls on need to negotiate
Iraq can't ignore rebel cleric's power
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle
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The devastating U.S. offensive against the militia of radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr came up against what could be a more formidable foe Friday -- the desire of the Iraqi government to negotiate peace.
The Najaf standoff poses a complicated challenge for American and Iraqi officials: whether to negotiate with al-Sadr and other radicals, or try to crush them militarily. But no matter what happens in the negotiations that began Friday, many analysts say Iraq's fast-growing number of anti-American militants eventually will have to be brought into the country's emerging political system.
Over the past two decades, peace negotiations around the world have succeeded only when rebel forces are allowed to come in from the cold, says Mark Schneider, vice president of the International Crisis Group in Washington, which has been closely involved in ending wars from Latin America to Africa to the Balkans.
"If you're going to have a successful reconciliation process, the losers can't feel that their fundamental needs are being ignored and that there's no option to participate in the political process," he said.
In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique and the Balkans, the United States has waged war -- either directly or through local proxy forces -- and finally supported peace negotiations that gave amnesty to its foes and allowed them to gain significant chunks of local power through democratic elections.
In Iraq, however, U.S. officials have expressed unwillingness to grant al- Sadr and his fighters an amnesty. U.S. diplomats reportedly helped block an attempt last month by the Iraqi government to give him a full amnesty, and on Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated he would oppose any deal that would allow al-Sadr to escape prosecution on charges of involvement in the killing of a fellow Iraqi cleric last year.
"There are charges that have been placed against him by Iraqi authorities, and I hope that in due course he will be available to answer those charges," Powell told reporters in Washington.
Some analysts disagree with that hard line. "You can't argue that you can't give amnesty to people who shoot at Americans," said James Dobbins, a veteran U.S. diplomat who served as special presidential envoy under the Clinton and both Bush administrations, traveling to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
"We didn't prosecute people merely for shooting at Americans in the Balkans, in Somalia, in Afghanistan or in Vietnam. It's not a war crime to shoot at a soldier. You can't try people just for making war. That part of the argument always struck me as unwise," he said. "There has to be some component of reconciliation and amnesty."
Al-Sadr aides said the Shiite cleric is demanding a U.S. withdrawal from Najaf and the freeing of all detained fighters in exchange for disarming his Mahdi Army militia and ending the fighting. For their part, U.S. troops and Iraqi officials want to ensure that any new truce would eliminate the flaws of a previous pact that ended a two-month uprising in early June. American officials say al-Sadr's militants repeatedly violated that cease-fire.
Some analysts who follow Iraqi Shiite politics say that despite al-Sadr's militancy, there is plenty of room for reaching a deal.
"If you go down the list of Muqtada al-Sadr's demands, none of these demands are absolutely nonnegotiable," said Abbas Kadhim, a Najaf native who is a lecturer in Islamic studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and is pursuing a doctorate in Near Eastern affairs at UC Berkeley.
"They are not ones that the government cannot accept; nonnegotiable would be departure of Americans from Iraq within a week. He's asking the foreign troops to pull out of Najaf, and his people should receive an amnesty. And on the government's side, it's easier than last time (in April). They're now saying they are not planning on arresting Muqtada -- unlike the showdown in April, when (now-departed U.S. administrator Paul) Bremer was demanding his arrest.
"There is a possibility for a deal, but both sides have to act outside the realm of their own arrogance. It's not negotiating over Jerusalem here; it's really an innocuous problem."
The new U.N. envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, arrived in Iraq on Friday and called for "a peaceful settlement of difference" in Najaf. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered to mediate an end to the standoff, saying that stability in Iraq should be achieved through "negotiation rather than violence." According to U.N. officials, al-Sadr's camp welcomed Qazi's intervention.
But many conservative analysts contend al-Sadr's movement must be crushed. "In any post-conflict situation, there are certain actors who define themselves as spoilers, who aren't willing to go along with the transitional game and who seek to disrupt the process, and Muqtada al-Sadr is one of them," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who spent three months earlier this year as a senior adviser to the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq.
"He has to be confronted and defeated. Otherwise, you're just kicking the problem down the road."
Diamond said the crucial test for Iraq's new political system will take place Sunday through Tuesday, when a national conference of 1,000 Iraqis is to select a 100-member interim national council. Al-Sadr's backers, as well as Sunni radicals and nationalist groups, are boycotting the meeting, which they call a gathering of hand-picked American puppets, raising the possibility that the conference will further polarize Iraq's politics.
Earlier this month, al-Sadr's supporters rejected the interim government's offer of one position on the council, calling it insufficient.
Kadhim says U.S. and Iraqi officials have made a strategic mistake in not giving significant representation to al-Sadr. "Muqtada is not just Muqtada -- he represents the energetic youth of Iraq, the downtrodden, those who were hurt first-hand by the former regime and who feel like they're getting no benefit from the new situation. These are a very large number of people. You can't wage war against all of them."
E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.
