I’m presuming the amnesty will only apply to past acts, and won’t be a blanket amnesty for future offenses. If the Sunnis and Shi’ites stop fighting each other in Iraq, and if we exit, ISTM there are two possibilities:
the foreign jihadists slink off and find somewhere else to do jihad; or
they keep blowing shit up in Iraq for no apparent reason, but there’s a much better chance of catching them than there is now, since there’ll be little popular support for them, and fewer other bad guys to track down.
And how we’re doing now definitely has to be part of the equation. We may be finding some of these guys, but there seem to be plenty more where they came from, and the violence doesn’t seem to abate.
False dichotomy-- there are other options. One of the reasons I’d be suspicious of the insurgent leaders’ motives is that they might have made a bargain with the foreign jihadists-- we negotiate the release of the non-Iraqis being detained or imprsioned and then we’ll fund and supply your actions in Iraq while you act as our proxies in using terrorism to undermine the government. I’m not saying that is what will happen, but if I were negotiating the deal and I thought there was a good chance that it might happen, I wouldn’t accept the demand for universal amnesty.
Irrelevant, Scotland has it’s own flag and automony, as do parts of the Basque region in Spain and Catalonia, however this doesn’t = secession. And I doubt the Kurds will seceed in the near future, because it’s not politically viable, and it would also mean isolation of the newly created state, as Iran, Syria and Turkey would boycott it.
And also, Sadr (I’m not sure if Dawa is, but I’ll have to look into that one, since it is the party of the current PM) is opposed to the ‘regionalisation’ of Iraq. So please don’t tarnish all Shia with the same brush. :rolleyes:
Oh, I see you’re implying that I only care about the Kurds because of interests which advance my agenda? If so, you know where to stick it.
I really do not understand what point you’re trying to make here.
Or he can just get the special ‘Iraqi Army backed up by Coalition forces’ militia roller to enforce the disarmament proposal, and incentives such as compensation, or merging of them forces into the army.
I don’t know how this can be said to ‘tone down’ or ‘soften’ the plan, much less how they got a count of four modifications to the original proposal. It does however look like they’re taking several steps back from reconciliation.
So, you’re claiming the ruling Kurdish parties have no desire to secede in all but name? Har har.
OK, there are shi’iteload of Shi’ites that want to secede in all but name from the greater whole of Iraq. Not all Shi’ites, but a lot of the players in this game. More than enough to refute a claim of:
which is such an absolutely laughable claim that I’m not sure why I even bothered to take the trouble to rebut.
:full Al Gore 2000 debate sigh:
You: “how the hell are we supposed to sit down and negotiate with insurgents who see the only way to achieve their goals is through violence?”
Me: “They’ve said (quoting the story again) “that any future talks should be conducted with American officials under UN or Arab League supervision, but not with the Iraqi government.” I guess you’re claiming the insurgents want to talk with us just to shoot the shit over a beer or something.”
You: “They want to show how powerless the Iraqi Government is in negotiating an end to the insurgency, hence wanting to go over their heads and talk to the Americans.”
Me: “= violence?? Pardon me, but this makes as much sense as 3 + 5 = cow.”
My point being that your response did not in any way, shape, or form support your claim that I was rebutting, that the insurgents aren’t willing to try to achieve their goals by means other than violence.
If you’re going to debate, it really helps to be able to remember from one post to the next just what you’re debatiing. Or, failing that, to be able to go back through the sequence of posts to see just what the issue under dispute is.
Please tell me you’re capable of that, because quite honestly, the evidence isn’t looking good. And in this thread, you don’t even have to click back and forth between pages.
Hey, you’re the one who’s saying Maliki could just roll back the militias if he chose.
Please, we’re trying to argue about what might or might not happen in this universe, not some other one. If ‘rolling back the militias’ was as simple as giving the order and it’d get done in the next Friedman (6 months, give or take), then it would have been done a year or two ago.
On the contrary, I know they would want to seceed, but their ability to do so is very limited. So the best way in which to protect themselves, and their interests, would be to involve themselves in what goes on in Baghdad, rather than ignoring it.
And according to some, alot support the anti secessionist, Al Sadr, and he’s not the only one within the Shia political sphere who wants Iraq to remain united.
You’re talking of Iraq being split up into seperate states, where as I see it, no one is realistically putting this on the table as an alternative to staying together. A federalised Iraq doesn’t = independence for regions.
Apologies for the misunderstanding, I never implied he would just order them to be rolled back, only that he can take steps to roll them back to show the insurgents willing to listen that he is sincere on his promises of reconciliation.
This is not covered by #2. There won’t be a better chance of catching them beacuse they’re being financed and sheltered by local Iraqis. Your #2 seems to assume that they would be acting as outside agitators without significant local support.
And I’m not picky about whether the separation is recorded by the next Rand McNally if parts of Iraq govern themselves without any interference from Baghdad.
Many Kurds want that. Many Shi’ites want that.
Thanks for the apology. But on the point of debate, if he can only take ineffective steps to get rid of the militias, then it really won’t matter to the insurgents how sincere he is.
OK, you’ve got a point. But still: part of #2 was that there’d be fewer other bad guys out there to track down - and under your scenario, that would be the case: the Sunni insurgents themselves would stop blowing shit up, and support the foreign jihadists who would do it for them. But even now, there’s little doubt that there are a lot more Iraqi Sunni insurgents than there are foreign jihadists acting in Iraq - and if there’s a Sunni-Shi’ite peace deal that involves our departure, it’s going to be a lot harder to recruit new foreign jihadists: the Great Satan is a much better recruiting tool than the Iraqi Shi’ites are.
And for your scheme to work at all, most Sunnis would have to believe the peace deal was for real; if it became common knowledge that the former Sunni insurgents were working through the foreign jihadists, then it’s right back to open war. So you’d have a lot of Sunnis on the street who’d assume they were supposed to turn in foreign jihadists. Not to mention, once the U.S. is out of there, a much larger number of Sunnis than at present would want the jihadists to butt out and MYOB.
The plan will be accepted because an election is coming on. The terms might be ugly but we can always pretend we are leaving and wait for elections. Then we will complain about the terms and go back. Then 2 yrs before next election.
I may be a little Cynical.
I’d say anyone who isn’t cynical, these days, can’t possibly be paying attention.
Still, I think things seem to have been scrambled here to a point where this ‘deal’ has little chance. First of all, an amnesty that involves killers of U.S. troops is probably a deal-breaker here at home (now that the Dems agogued it, the GOP has done a 180° on the question, and decided it’s unacceptable) but it’s a necessity in Iraq - even with the smaller insurgent groups that were in the negotiations.
Second, if Maliki wasn’t negotiating with the real opposition, which seems to have been the case, then any deal he strikes is meaningless anyway - and unless the deal is signed on October 28 or thereabouts, the meaninglessness of the deal will be visible before the midterm election.
What I don’t get is how is the Maliki Government supposed to declare these Sunni insurgent groups as ‘national resistance’ when those forces themselves are mandated by the UN at the request of the Iraqi Government?
The amnesty discussions haven’t moved much since Maliki first brought up the possibility of letting combatants return to the fold. I don’t see how they’ll get much done without resolving that issue.
I don’t have a cite handy right now, but one of the reasons why I haven’t posted to this thread for some time is that I’ve read that the Bush Administration has vetoed any amnesty involving killers of American troops. (I was told that the new Iraq government was the sovereign government of Iraq. Apparently I was misinformed.) And like you say, amnesty is essential.
Presumably that’s the ‘meddling’ the Qatari paper talks about. Too bad; without some real concessions by the democratically elected government, the reconcilliation talks will just wander aimlessly until everything is subsumed by civil war.
What happens when even if this was proposed you’re back to square one? As far as I’ve seen, there’s been no real attempt by Sunni insurgent organisation to honour such a deal if it were proposed to them.
I personally think rolling back the militias would be more attractive to the insurgents than the amnesty for them killing Coalition troops, something they can ignore because they can eventually leave.
