Iraq Shi’ites hammer home autonomy demands

By Khaled Farhan

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) – Shi’ite Islamist leaders hammered
home demands for an autonomous federal state for their people
across oil-rich southern Iraq on Thursday, four days before a
deadline for agreeing a new constitution.

Minority Sunni Arab leaders, as well as a spokesman for the
Shi’ite-led coalition government, rejected the idea and it was
unclear whether the split would hold up delivery of a draft
text that Washington hopes can help quell the Sunni insurgency.

At an impassioned mass rally in Najaf, heartland of Shi’ite
Islam, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution Abdul Aziz al-Hakim turned up the pressure on his
opponents from ethnic and religious minorities as the head of
his party’s military wing derided central government in
Baghdad.

“Regarding federalism, we think that it is necessary to
form one entire region in the south,” said Hakim, leader of
SCIRI, and a powerful force in the coalition that came to power
in January’s election, secured by U.S. military occupation.

Shi’ites account for about 60 percent of Iraq’s people and
the issue of autonomy raises major concerns for the country’s
ability to hold together and for the division of its oil
wealth.

Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, other
minorities and secular Shi’ites wary of religious rule have
been opposing the idea of a constitution that would allow
southern Shi’ites the kind of autonomy now enjoyed de facto by
Kurds in the north.

“Federalism has to be in all of Iraq. They are trying to
prevent the Shi’ites from enjoying their own federalism,” said
Hadi al-Amery, head of the Badr movement, a militia
organization formed by SCIRI when it was fighting Saddam from
Iranian exile.

“What have we got from the central government but death?”

NEGOTIATING TACTIC?

Bahaa al-Araji, a leading Shi’ite on the committee writing
the constitution, said disputes over regional autonomy were
key.

He rejected Hakim’s project as sectarian and divisive. The
proposal may partly be a negotiating tactic, however. The
Kurds, Araji said, are resisting efforts to curb the autonomy
of regions — of which Kurdistan is so far the only one.

“If there were Shi’ite and Sunni regions it would simply
entrench sectarianism and destroy the unity of Iraq,” Araji
told Reuters. “We have 16 points of dispute, the most important
of which is federalism. If we can deal with that … we should
finish in the next few days so the draft will be ready on
time.”

SCIRI, long close to Shi’ite Iran, inspires strong emotions
among Iraqis. Opponents accuse it and the Badr movement of
fomenting religious vigilantism, charges they deny. Hakim again
pressed for Islam to be “the main source” of law in the new
Iraq, a proposal that alarms some women and minority groups.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, closely involved behind the
scenes in a project Washington sees as vital to its interests
in stabilizing Iraq, has made clear he will not tolerate the
kind of Islamic rule practiced by America’s regional foes in
Tehran.

Hakim’s rousing calls were greeted with wild enthusiasm by
tens of thousands of supporters crying “Yes, yes to Islam!,”
“Yes, yes to Hakim!” among other slogans. The meeting was
called to commemorate the assassination two years ago by a huge
car bomb in Najaf of Hakim’s brother, the former SCIRI leader.

But in Baghdad, Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister
Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shi’ite Islamist from SCIRI rival Dawa,
said: “The idea of a Shi’ite region … is unacceptable to us.”

SUNNI RESISTANCE

Saleh al-Mutlak, a leading Sunni Arab politician, told
Reuters: “We hoped this day would never come. We believe that
the Arabs, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, are one. We totally reject
any attempt to stir up sectarian issues to divide Iraq.”

Hakim and Amery made clear their demands, which have rarely
been so vocally expressed, went beyond a project floated in the
southern second city of Basra in recent months to merge three
of Iraq’s 18 provinces around Basra into a new federal region.

That plan too had been criticized by other groups fearful
that Sunnis and others in central Iraq would lose control of
the vast southern oilfields. Sunnis also fear Kurdish ambitions
to extend their control over oil reserves in the north.

Division of oil revenues has played a big role for leaders
locked in talks this week. Hakim and Amery said south and
central Iraq should be allowed autonomy within a new
federation.

An interim constitution states that Baghdad, in the center
and with a mixed population, should not be drawn into such an
arrangement. But a region stretching from the Shi’ite holy city
of Kerbala to Basra near the Gulf would have a largely Shi’ite
population comprising roughly half of Iraq’s 26 million people.

Other participants in talks on the constitution have said
that they expect rules on how federal regions can be formed to
be left out of the draft and left for later discussion.

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Mussab
Al-Khairalla, Hiba Moussa, Andrew Hammon, Waleed Ibrahim and
Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)