The Four missing points

In the first days of June, 2006, Mr. Al-Maliki declared that a detailed Iraqi reconciliation plan would soon be announced. This was six months after the First Iraqi Reconciliation Conference in Cairo produced a list of recommendations to the government on how to initiate full-scale national reconciliation and accord. The Cairo conference recommendations, announced on November 21st 2005, included a request for a timetable for withdrawal of the occupation troops and recognized the right of the Iraqi people to resist against their occupiers. It condemned terrorist attacks against civilians and demanded the release of non-convicted prisoners, as well as the immediate halt of any more raids and arrests without court orders.

A majority of Iraqis were looking forward to hearing the details of this reconciliation and accord plan. According to local and international polls, most Iraqis believed this plan was the light at the end of the tunnel. On June 23rd, a 28 point package for national reconciliation was published in both The Times and Az-Zaman, a major Iraqi daily newspaper. The plan was extremely appealing to the vast majority of Iraqis, even Iraqis affiliated with violent and non-violent resistance. Yet in America, the plan triggered a wave of protest in the United States government which opposed some of its major points.

When the reconciliation plan was presented officially in front of the Iraqi Parliament on Sunday the 25th, the U.S. intervention had turned the strong 28 point plan into a much weaker and disappointing 24 point plan. While many of the points concerning the Iraqi-Iraqi problems managed to survive the U.S. editing, the major four points of the plan did not.

The four points that “fell” from the 24 point plan are:

1- The amnesty: Mr. Al-Maliki announced June 15th that his government would not negotiate with “murderers and criminals who have killed innocent people,” but he was open to consulting with Iraqi armed resistance groups. The next day, Mr. Adnan al-Kadhimi, the political advisor of Mr. Al-Maliki, repeated what Mr. Al-Maliki had said regarding the granting of amnesty to Iraqi insurgents. Mr. Talabani confirmed this on June 22nd and declared that this amnesty will include all Iraqis except those “who committed serious crimes against civilians.” In accordance with this, the 28 point plan included a general amnesty for insurgents excluding terrorists who attacked civilians. When the Iraqi government asked Mr. Adan al-Kadhimi to resign, some observers thought it was due to pressure from the United States, and a sign that he was going to turn his back on amnesty. Despite the fact that the 24 point plan just excluded those who committed “crimes, terrorist acts, war crimes, and crimes against humanity”, Al-Maliki’s said: “Regarding the amnesty, in fact it does not include those who killed Iraqis or even those who killed multinational soldiers from multinational forces. Those soldiers came to Iraq under international agreement to help Iraq. We will not give amnesty to anyone who killed their soldiers”. Mr. Al-Maliki did not mention any further details about this “international agreement”.

2- Timetable for Withdrawal. Although it is the major recommendation of the First Reconciliation Conference in Cairo, and a major reason for Iraq’s instability, it is not mentioned in the 24 point plan. The latest polls earlier this year showed that 87% of Iraqis support a request for setting a timetable for pulling out the occupation troops. The 28 point plan included a clear request for “a UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq,” but the 24 point plan ignored this request completely. Instead, it promised to build the Iraqi armed forces as a needed step “to facilitate the withdrawal of the multi-national forces” in the future. Thus the 24 point plan ignores the fact that removing the request for a withdrawal timetable is the main reason why 11 of Iraq’s most powerful insurgent groups announced they were not interested in the offer. Even the other 10, relatively smaller insurgent groups who are willing to negotiate with the government are requesting a timetable for withdrawing the occupation troops as their main, and sometimes only, condition for serious negotiations to start.

3- A halt of US-led coalition operations. This was also one of the major recommendations of the First Reconciliation Conference. Instead, the 24 point plan included one shy request for “negotiating” with the US-led coalition to ensure no human rights abuses are committed during operations.

4- Compensations for the War Victims. The original plan asked to compensate all the victims of “the armed groups, the Iraqi forces, and the multi-national forces”. The 24 point plan took out the words “multi-national forces”.

Overall, the 24 point plan still contains many important points, but the removal of those four major points will reduce the chances for such a plan to succeed.