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Weekly UpdatesOn the same day as Obama arrived in Iraq, Maleki's Shi'ite National Dialogue Minister Akram al-Hakim landed in Cairo to meet with former Ba'thists and ex-officers from the Iraqi army in exile. He had been sent to ask these elements to renounce violence and return to participate in government.
Hakim tackled critical points such as a general amnesty promised recently by Maleki which would free thousands of Iraqi Sunnis held in Iraqi jails as well as allow those living abroad to return to the country and join the political process. 'Allawi, Mutlaq and other secular figures have long call for such a move, which they see as essential to real national reconciliation.
At about the same time, however, Saddam's deputy 'Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri came out with a voice recording calling for a new relationship with Obama's America, but only after the US withdrew its troops completely from Iraq by end-2011. Douri, the last surviving Ba'thist leader with a $10m bounty on his head, has not been seen in public since Saddam's downfall in 2003.
Douri is a Sufi of the Naqshabandi group and he is believed to be hiding somewhere within one of the group's strongholds in the north-western province of Nineveh which borders with Syria. Douri is also believed to have clearance from the 'Alawite/Ba'thist regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus for him to move freely into and out of Syria whenever he feels this is necessary to maintain his leadership over those remnants of Iraq's Ba'th Party who still plan to regain power in Baghdad after the Americans have gone.
The reduced sentence of Zaidi and the new tone of Douri are causing a stir in Iraqi government and Sunni circles. The root of the reconciliation lies in Maleki's back-tracking from earlier remarks accusing Sunnis of carrying out six deadly car bomb attacks in Shi'ite districts around the Iraqi capital on April 6. When initially commenting on the car bombs, Maleki was clearly very angry. He first accused the Ba'th Party, only to realise that this might trigger more violence, and could upset the relative tranquility of which he had been boasting of since mid-2008.
Maleki originally claimed that the Ba'th Party had carried out the April 6 attacks as a "gift" to mark his 62nd birthday. According to Asia Times Online, advisers then reminded him that his real concern was no longer the Ba'thists. Deprived of arms and proper leadership - with Saddam gone and all of his top generals behind bars - the Ba'thists no longer threaten Iraqi security the way they did in 2003-2005. Their current commander, Douri, is 67 years old and in bad health.
That explains why Hakim is in Cairo, and why even 'Allawi, who served as interim PM in 2004-05, has said he is willing to sit down and talk to Douri. 'Allawi, having allies among Iraq's Sunni Arabs, says: "I support the integration of the Ba'thists into the political process", arguing that working with the Ba'th Party would be an asset, rather than a liability, for the Iraqi government. An integration of the Ba'th would help bridge the gap between powerful Shi'ites and disgruntled Sunnis.
Maleki's real problem lies in the ACs, created by the outgoing Bush team in 2007 to serve as an armed wing for the Sunni community in their fight against the Qaeda-led Neo-Salafi insurgency. Then, Maleki aggressively argued against the AC movement, claiming this legitimised Sunni militias and left the Shi'ites with nothing. He argued that after the ACs were finished fighting al-Qaeda, they would turn their guns against the Shi'ites. Maleki responded by encouraging young Shi'ites to enlist, en masse, in the security forces, while paying little attention to their education, training or low discipline levels.
The argument then was, "If the Sunnis are going to legitimise their militias, so will we". Maleki has since been searching for creative ways to muzzle the ACs, and in March began arresting several of their senior commanders. He accused them of establishing contacts with al-Qaeda.
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