The Nouri al-Maliki government is still insistent on not allowing the Sunnis to take a role in Iraq’s future. The issue of the Awakening councils is one more evidence on that.

Although the Bush administration is pushing Maliki and his backup groups of turbaned snakes, including Ali al-Sistani, to allow members of the Awakening councils into the Iraqi forces, the Shiite Iraqi government is not making any progress on the issue. Maliki offered to include only 20% of the over 70,000 Sunnis in the Iraqi armed forces and try to “train” the rest to join the public sector.

Why only 20%? Why Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005 and Maliki after him included every single Shiite militia member in the Iraqi army and police, and now only 20% of the Sunni Awakening councils will be allowed?

More than a year ago, I wrote a post about how important it is to start the talks with those who call themselves “Iraqi resistance” and said that if you negotiate with the Shiite militias like Bard troops, al-Mehdi army and Fadhila party militias, you have to negotiate with the Iraqi Sunni insurgents too. Otherwise, you will have a country run by Shiite militias, who are fought by Sunni insurgents, and security will never see the way to Iraq.

A year later, as usual, the Bush administration realized that the best way to bring stability to Iraq is by including the Sunnis in its future. Although it was at least two years late, it was a good late start.

We have to understand that if we want stability in Iraq, we have to talk to the Sunnis and try to find a compromise with them. We talked to the Kurds and Shiites and gave them what they wanted, didn’t we?

For so long, Harith al-Dhari and al-Qaeda in Iraq have controlled the Sunni youth and directed them to destroy Iraq and its future. And because the elected governments in Iraq after the invasion were both controlled by traumatized Shiite clergies and influence from Iran, some Sunnis thought the best way to change the future is by fighting against the government, which proved wrong and in the interest of everyone but the Iraqis themselves.

Finally, those deceived Sunnis are back to Iraq [metaphorically speaking] they now realize that Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal who is whining over what he lost after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Most of the Sunnis in Iraq realized, although very late, that while Harith al-Dhari, his son and their henchmen are enjoying their life in Jordan, Egypt and UAE, the average Iraqis are being killed every day just to feed Dhari’s bank accounts. While the Dhari gang is living in luxury outside Iraq, the average Iraqis are living in poverty and danger. That’s what the Sunnis in Baghdad realize now, and that’s where the word Sahwa, or Awakening, came from. They are awake now.

Finally the Sunnis, who were involved in the fight against the U.S. troops and Iraqi government, are fighting Iraq’s real enemy: Harith al-Dhari gang and al-Qaeda.

But Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t want to include them in the Iraqi forces. Why?

See, Maliki’s plan, and of course it is the plan of the traumatized Shiites inside the decision making circle, is to Shiitize the Iraqi political arena, or make it Shiite, and they succeeded in doing that, but they failed to create a state.

The Iraqi Shiites have lost their best chance to prove to the world that they can run a country without turning it into an Islamic theology that negatively affects its relations with the outside world. They were given the chance to prove that not every Shiite regime should be another Iran, or another Hezbollah, but they failed. The average Iraqi Shiites trusted the Shiite “leaders” and thought they will be the way ahead. What they did not put into considerations is: who are those “leaders?”

Hakim? Iran’s weapon against Iraqis and the one who supervised the torture of the Iraqi soldiers in the 1980s? The one who wants to cut a big chunk of Iraq’s map so he can control its oil? The one who came to Iraq calling for the Shiites’ rights and four years later the Shiites are still waiting for the change?

Or Ibrahim al-Jaafari? What did the average Iraqi Shiites get during the time when Jaafari was Prime Minister?

Or maybe Sistani? The Mullah who refused to go to Mecca to meet with other Iraqi religious authorities, Sunnis and Shiites, to publicly denounce the killing of Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq? he refused to go to Mecca, which is the holiest Muslim city in the world and refused to participate in the most noble and important campaign: to stop the bloodshed in Iraq! [all other Sunni and Shiite religious leaders participated or sent representatives.]

Or maybe Fadhila party? The party that is now the reason why Basra is not a stable city and the party that fought with other Shiites over the control of oil in the south.

Or Muqtada al-Sadr? Well, I need to say no more. His name is enough to prove the idea is wrong.

And the list goes on and on.

Therefore, what we’ve got is this:

A government that sent a clear message to all Iraqis: We speak for the Shiites in Iraq, even if they don’t like it. We came back to Iraq and we have people to run the country. Therefore, except for the Kurds, no one else has the right to participate in power, not even the Shiites.

So, the Sunnis decided to fight against the Shiite government [and the U.S. troops because they protected the government.] Then al-Qaeda found its best chance in this gap in Iraq and recruited more and more insurgents.

The Shiite militias, financed and baked by the Iraqi government and Ali al-Sistani, worked on the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, and the Sunni insurgents started to react by killing more innocent Shiites. Christians were included in the equation and were forced out of the city. They both succeeded, the Sunnis insurgents and the Shiite militias because more and more Sunnis left Baghdad and more and more educated Shiites left too.

The militias then worked on the second part of the plan: replacing those who left with new residents. So, they brought the uneducated, uncivilized criminals and members of the militias and housed them in the empty houses in Baghdad. Of course, Maliki’s government was aware of this and did not protect people’s properties, although Iraqis and international organizations warned of this. Therefore, the Maliki government was supporting this plan, if not the planner, I believe.

Now, we have a Baghdad that is full of uneducated people who have no jobs and most of them are either criminals or militia members or their families. And the original residents of Baghdad, who did not leave, stay in their houses fearing for their lives and don’t participate in public life.

Then, the government called for the displaced to return to Iraq, but return where? They came back and found their houses takes, their businesses destroyed and they have no place to go.

They changed the makeup of Baghdad and the results are not now, we will see the results in 10 or 15 years, when the new residents of Baghdad are supposed to take over and continue running the place. How are they going to do it with no qualifications? With no education and with no civilization?

The problem is that: Now there is no religious Shiite man or woman that is capable of loving Iraq as is, nor there is a Sunni, because they are all driven by their hate of the others. Shiite and Sunni politicians, who adapt Islam as their constitution, have brought Iraq nothing but devastation.

The Shiite religious government in Iraq now is afraid that if the Sunnis got power, they may rise again. I don’t find this fear as surprising because, as I said before, they are traumatized. They will make anything to insure that the Sunnis don’t get power in Iraq again, which is causing them a lot of backfire. The Sunnis will always be in Iraq and will always seek power. The best way to do it is to share, which is what they promised before they came to Iraq anyway!

And now, to insure Sunnis don't get power in Iraq, Maliki is making another mistake by not allowing the Awakening councils into the Iraqi security forces. It will definitely backfire on him and his government. But fortunately, the Bush administration is now convinced that the Sunnis should be given space in Iraq’s government. And with the pressure from the U.S., he will have to say yes. But here is what I think will happen:

The government will announce that members of the Awakening councils will be allowed into the Iraqi security forces. Then, the government will direct them to registration centers. Then, we will read stories about Awakening councils registration centers being blown up and attacked by car bombs and IEDs and suicide bombers. This will terrify the rest and there will be no Awakening councils members in the Iraqi security forces. And that will be another success for Nouri al-Maliki, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Harith al-Dhari and Usama Bin Laden.

Therefore, I believe, and time will prove me right again, that whether it is a Shiite or a Sunni government, Iraq will be a failed state if it has an Islamic government. There is no choice for Iraqis but a secular government. A government where Sistani is nothing but a religious figure and limited to that, and Harith al-Dhari is nothing but a criminal and is serving his time in jail.

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

NOTE: Ali has posted a new entry.

The Iraqi government is proving, once again, that it is everything but what the Bush administration hoped it would be. It is now sabotaging what the Americans have achieved and are trying to do to help improve the situation in Iraq:

After spending millions of dollars and months of strategy making and information gathering, the U.S. Army and Marines in Iraq succeeded to win the former insurgents to their sides [which is in fact the Iraqis side] and turned them against al-Qaeda and terrorists in Iraq. They are called al-Sahwa councils.

Now, the Americans are trying to convince the Iraqi government to include those groups into the Iraqi security forces, but the Iraqi government said no!

The Iraqi government’s argument is that no one who caused the death of Iraqis should be in the Iraqi forces!

My argument would be: What about the Shiite militias, like Bard troops and al-Mehdi army? Didn’t Ibrahim al-Jaafari start to include them in the Iraqi police and army in May 2005? And didn’t Maliki authorize 18,000 Shiite militia members to join the police and army just less than a month ago? And what about the pesh merga? Weren’t they militias and now they are considered part of the Iraqi security forces?

On another subject, reporters are now changing their tone when they talk about the situation in Baghdad. As we all noticed, in the last two months, and maybe three, news outlets have been talking about how Baghdad is “safe” and how the security situation is improving, which led to the return of thousands of Iraqis from Syria to Baghdad, or that’s what they claimed.

The Iraqi government did its best to advertise the return of many Iraqis to Baghdad, but did not explain why they returned. The government provided buses to those who were “willing” to return. And the press, especially the American press, served as the advertising company for the Iraqi government and published stories and aired shows talking about the return of some families, encouraged by the “safety and improving situation” in Baghdad.

I, and many other informed Iraqi bloggers, wrote about this misleading, in which the American media played a vital role. And we warned that the return of some Iraqis is not because of the “improving situation,” but because their visas expired in Syria and they were kicked out of the country, or they spent all their savings and cannot stay there. So, we said that the Iraqis were forced to go back and did not choose to.

Did reporters ask why only the Iraqis who fled to Syria were going back before they wrote their misleading stories? No.

I can tell you why:

The Iraqis who left to Jordan were the early ones to leave Iraq because they were able to afford it. Jordan is a very expensive place and therefore only the high class and upper middle class Iraqis could go there and afford to live without the need to work. And those who were not as wealthy were able to find jobs in the early days of the migration in late 2003. And because they arrived to Jordan that early, they were able to get permanent residencies, before the Jordanian government decided that they’ve sucked enough oil and money from Iraq and decided to stop issuing visas to Iraqis.

After that, everyone wanted to leave because the situation became unbearable in Iraq, but most of them did not have the financial ability to live in Jordan and because the Jordanians stopped giving Iraqis residencies. So, the best second choice was Syria. Syria is cheap and was open to host Iraqis. So, all the Iraqis who moved to Syria were middle class and working class people, who were only able to live outside Iraq for a while, spending their savings.

But then they run out of money and their visas expired. The Syrians don’t extend the visas and there are no jobs for Iraqis. What is the solution? Go back to Iraq.

And now, everything is clear to the “brilliant” reporters at the New York Times and The Washington Post. Finally, they realized what we’ve said proved to be right.

Most returnees came back to find themselves homeless. They lost their houses to strangers backed by militias or insurgents. They lost their jobs and now are living with relatives.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Many have run out of money and options in Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries, all of which have recently intensified efforts to evict Iraqi refugees. Others have exhausted the patience and resources of family and friends. Lured by reports of security improvements and encouraged by a government eager to demonstrate normalcy, they have started to trickle back over the past two months.

“It's very easy to say, ‘Come home,’ ” the reporter quoted Guy Siri, the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, as saying. He added: “But come home where, and how? It's much more complex than that. You have to look at the whole environment, how the community will accept them, whether it's economically viable. There's a whole lot of thinking on the government side to be done.”

And the Iraqi government is doing absolutely nothing. It promised to bring back the returnees to their homes, and it did not. Foreign reporters and U.S. administration only focused on the return and the promises, but they did not do the most obvious step of writing a story: a follow up story!

The government also promised financial aid for those who returned so they can start their lives over, but it did not deliver any help.

I and other Iraqi bloggers talked about the sectarian carving of Baghdad’s neighborhoods and said that it was the reason why the number of people killed in the city is low. I specifically said:

Sunnis cannot go to Shiite neighborhoods and Shiites cannot go to Sunni neighborhoods. Therefore, there are not as many targets in the streets like before. And that’s why you think that the number of people killed in the streets is less and violence has decreased.

But I was cursed!

Now, here is an American saying the same thing:

“There is an element of the violence being down because segregation has already happened,” Col. William E. Rapp, a senior aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in the Post’s story. “The violence is still at the fault lines, and we're sitting on those fault lines.”

The UN, along with U.S. officials in Iraq, asked the Iraqis government to hold the free bus rides from Syria to Baghdad.

Now you believe?

Something else:

Even the government of Kurdistan, which was always secular and had nothing to do with political Islam, is changing its strategy and is going backwards. After giving up on real politics and professional negotiations, Prime Minister of Kurdistan, Nejervan Barzani, appealed to Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric, to help him settle the issue of Kirkuk.

Is that what we sacrificed for and are calling for; Iraq where turbaned snakes govern and Islamic laws and rules from 1500 years ago tell me how to live and eat and drink? Because that's where Iraq is heading and it seems that Nouri al-Maliki and Usama bin Laden have succeeded!

From time to time, I write a post about a personal experience, if I find it appropriate and interesting to the readers in a way that involves a cultural learning or differences.

Today, I want to tell you about my Thanksgiving trip.

This year, I went to Orange County, where one of my American families live. I know this family for some time now. They are my close friend’s in-laws. Although it sounds like they are not very close to me, but they are. They are some of the best people that I’ve ever met-- true Americans, as I like to say.

It is very interesting how all the cultural differences and backgrounds suddenly melt away just because people want to understand each other. I am a Muslim and they are Jewish.

They picked me up from the airport, although they had a lot to do that day. When I arrived to the house, I was welcomed as a family member. Everyone was waiting for me, not in a formal way. But they all were expecting me to come because I am one of them, or so I strongly felt.

What I like to share with you from Thanksgiving Day is how the owner of the house, whom I will call “Mr. Father” greeted the visitors. More than 25 people were invited to dinner that day.

Once it’s dinner time, we took our seats around the tables, which were beautifully decorated with centerpieces of banana leaves and roses. And Mr. Father shushed us all to greet everybody and toast:

“I, Ellen, ---, ---, ---, ---, and Omar and grandma welcome you to our house and wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

I was only listening when he said the words, I wasn’t looking at him or anybody else. But once I heard my name, I was suddenly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. I didn’t know what to do: happy because this wonderful man considers me as one of the family, or sad because I am not with my immediate family, or proud because that’s how much they like me, or whatever. I was certainly feeling all these emotions in one second and a split.

I looked at Mr. Father, who looked blurry to me because of the shy tears in my eyes, and saw a big smile on his face as if saying “yes, you are one of us.” I looked at my friend, who was holding his wife in both arms, and saw big smiles on their faces, smiles that made me feel very comfortable and happy to be with them. And I looked at the people in the room, and they all smiled and nodded with satisfaction.

I spent the rest of the night laughing and joking with people, sharing funny stories from my time here and from back home.

The next day, the family decided that while everyone is there they should celebrate an early Hanukkah. We had a breakfast and then they lit the menorah. Then came the fun part: they exchanged gifts and I got to watch the happy children as they opened their gifts, and I also watched grownups open their gifts and try them on [mostly clothes.] and then came the surprise, I got gifts too, and holiday cards! [The picture above is of grandma’s card.]

This is my life in the US. I never had a bad experience with people. I’ve been to north, south, east and west in this country and have never encountered problems with people. Wherever I go, people are nice, welcoming, generous and understanding. Even those who I disagreed with over different issue, not necessarily Iraq, were always polite.

While we are talking about Thanksgiving, let me share with you a few lines from a 1500-word piece I wrote last year after I spent Thanksgiving with another friend’s family in Vermont.

It was nine in the morning the next day when I woke up humming the words of the Iraqi national anthem. I don’t know when I started, but I thought I was dreaming when I heard the tone to which I hummed. But it wasn’t a dream.

Because Bassam and I weren’t up yet, Jon played the Iraqi anthem on the flute right outside the door. He thought it would be a nice way to wake up on the sound of the Iraqi anthem. It wasn’t only nice, it was great and perfect. Everything was perfect in this trip.

It was Thanksgiving Day. It was a great day. The sun was up and the fields around the house were marvelous. I couldn’t see the place the night before because it was dark. It is a piece of heaven, I thought. I argued with Bassam that God cannot make better than such a place to call heaven. It was perfect: nice weather, clean air, quiet surroundings, water sparkled in springs, birds chirping and us having fun.

My job was to light the candles in the chandelier in the big room, which was built in the late 1700s and is centered by a giant square dining table. [the tradition in this house is that Jon’s father gets to light the candles. But this year, he said, he will make an exception and asked me to do it to show me how much he is happy that we are here.]

We were about 20 people around the table, but there was space for more.

“I’m most happy when we have company,” Jon’s father said as he offered the toast. “You can all come back anytime. This is permanent.”

I looked at the people around me, they were happy. I was happy too. It was loud and that was perfect to hum some Iraqi songs.

“Eid [Arabic for feast] and love tonight and people are celebrating,” I sang. “If you were with me, it would be twice as happy.” I pictured my family as I sang.

This is the kind of experience I am having in the States. How can I not love this country and its people? How can I not push for better relations and great friendship between Iraq and the United States when I am an Iraqi politician in the future?

Therefore, when it was my turn to say what I am thankful for this year, I said: “I don’t want to sound political, but I am thankful for this nation because it gave me a chance to live. It gave me people like you, who I consider family and it gave me this moment when I heard my name said as part of this family.”

I want to add now that “this nation gave me a home, when my home rejected me.”

Feeh

Note: Ali has written a piece too and there is a new piece by Yasmie on the Visiting Writers site.