Government committee will talk to community leaders in hot spots

The Iraqi government has formed a high-level committee to establish a dialogue with community leaders in tense areas of the country in order to help resolve armed conflicts and prevent the emergence of new ones. The committee will be chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed al-Chalabi and will include several senior government officials. Launching the initiative at a press conference last week, al-Chalabi said the committee’s first task would be to contact religious leaders from the Mosul governorate in northern Iraq and Anbar in the west. Both these areas are strongholds of Islamic insurgents opposed to the US military presence in Iraq. They have frequently witnessed joint attacks by US and Iraqi government forces against these armed militants. US forces launched an offensive against Islamic insurgents in the town of Talafar in Mosul district last month and they are currently engaging the rebels on two separate fronts in the Euphrates river valley in Anbar province. Government officials said the committee planned to hold its first meetings this week with community representatives from the troubled towns of Ramadi and Fallujah in Anbar. “This committee will help us create a stronger country and prevent the widening of the insurgency by giving people the chance to let their voices be heard and tell us their ideas and wishes,” said Sarmed Youssef, a senior government official. The new body plans to consult a variety of prominent personalities including tribal leaders, doctors and religious intellectuals. “Our initiative in forming this committee shows that we are trying to bring solutions to the differences in the country without the use of violence,” Youssef said. “Maybe the (military) operations which are currently underway in Talafar and al-Qaim send the wrong message to Iraqis, but those will be the last operations before this new process, which has every ingredient necessary to become a success,” he added. “We just need the understanding and good will of the residents in these areas,” the government official said. However, the creation of the new committee has provoked mixed reactions. “It will be a good channel for Iraqis in tense areas to let the government know about their complaints without using guns,” said Sheikh Abbas Dileime, a senior religious leader in the Anbar province. “It is a good step forward for the democracy in which Iraq has been enjoying since the fall of Saddam Hussein and it will make a difference.” But others dismissed the committee as a pointless talking shop which would collect ideas without ever acting on them. “People won’t show any respect to this committee because those behind the military operations, the US forces, are the ones who decide how and when to act,” said Sheikh Zacarias Rabia’a, an influential Sunni religious leader in Samarra, a town near Tikrit, the birth place of deposed president Sadam Hussein. “It will just be a waste of time and give false hope to Iraqis,” he added. The insurgency draws most of its support from Sunni Muslims and Rabia’a’s views on how to proceed on fighting issues is widely listened too by the local Sunni community in Samarra, a hotbed of rebel activity. Government committees were set up last year to win the support of community leaders in Fallujah before fighting erupted in the city, but they had little success. Deep differences between the two sides and the difficulty of engaging several different insurgent groups in Fallujah led to a breakdown in negotiations. The US forces also said at the time they were not interested in negotiating with people who they regarded as “terrorists.” “If we had had the chance that the other areas are having now to calmly exchange ideas and get help from the government, maybe today Fallujah would be a different story,” said Khaled al-Subhi, a senior government official in Anbar governorate. “For this reason, people should not waste the opportunity they have now.”