Iraqi
Insurgents Offer Peace In Return For US Concessions
By Robert Fisk
10 February, 2007
The
Independent
For
the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out
the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces
to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.
The present terms would be
impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu
Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic
Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than
3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts
with the occupation army.
Al-Jeelani's group, which
also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military
wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks
on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore,
of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only
the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.
Shia militias are nowhere
mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi
constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards
oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority
Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies
in the Iraqi war.
"Discussions and negotiations
are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi
bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was
passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate
their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace,
then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."
Al-Jeelani suggests the United
Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations
and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.
Then come the conditions:
* The release of 5,000 detainees
held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".
* Recognition "of the
legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing
the will of the Iraqi people".
* An internationally guaranteed
timetable for all agreements.
* The negotiations to take
place in public.
* The resistance "must
be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all
the jihadist brigades".
* The US to be represented
by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.
It is not difficult to see
why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to
talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for
the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance"
represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support
for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.
Indeed, the insurgent leader
specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government
and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."
He also insists that all
agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces
should be declared null and void.
But there are other points
which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the
insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi
Islamic Army.
They call, for example, for
the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations
- something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister,
Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.
The terms also include the
legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment
to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the
occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time -
and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed
army.
Al-Jeelani described President
George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political
chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not
believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the
resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation
...
"The resistance groups
are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are
not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine
aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our
land of Iraq."
There will, the group says,
be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider
it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security
apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of
Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi
people".
It is not difficult to guess
any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation
Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by
Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to
meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French
withdrawal.
What is unclear, of course,
is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective
ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of
al-Qa'ida.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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