Iraq’s parliament was to meet yesterday under pressure to approve an inclusive government to win broad support against jihadists, as US President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a strategy to defeat them.
The outgoing government has faced criticism that by alienating the Sunni Arab minority, it helped create conditions that revitalized Sunni militants, including the Islamic State (IS) group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which led an offensive that seized much of the Sunni heartland in June.
Washington and the UN have repeatedly called on Iraqi prime minister-designate Haidar al-Abadi to form a broad-based government.
Photo: AFP
Giving Sunnis a greater stake in power could help encourage them to join a fightback against the jihadists.
New UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the atrocities IS had committed in areas under its control had already shown Sunnis that jihadist rule promised only a “house of blood.”
The key parliament session was due to open at 5pm GMT and end with a vote on a new government line-up. There has still been no word from Abadi’s office on the list to be put to members of parliament (MPs) and the political horse-trading was expected to go right to the wire.
“I expect changes to occur until the final moments,” said Samira al-Mussawi, an MP from Abadi’s State of Law alliance.
She said there were persistent “differences over ... positions such as deputy prime ministers and some of the key ministries, such as defense and interior.”
With Shiite militia playing a key role alongside the regular army in fighting the jihadists, one of their commanders is apparently seeking to turn military gains into political capital, which could complicate efforts to bring Sunnis on board.
Shiite lawmaker Ammar Toma said that outgoing Iraqi Minister of Transport Hadi al-Ameri, who heads the Badr militia, which has close ties with Iran, was under consideration for the interior portfolio, which would put him in charge of most of Iraq’s security forces.
In the previous government, key security ministries were left vacant and run by acting ministers.
Toma said he still expected the political bargaining to be completed in time for the vote to go ahead as planned.
Former commander-in-chief of US-led forces in Iraq general David Petraeus warned against the US becoming an “air force for Shiite militias,” which have brutal pasts in the sectarian conflict that gripped Iraq from 2006 to 2008.
Obama, who made his political career opposing the war in Iraq and pulled out US troops in 2011, promised to unveil a long-awaited strategy tomorrow to tackle IS in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.
“I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from” IS, Obama said in an interview aired on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
He said he would not announce the return of US ground troops to Iraq, and would focus instead on a “counter-terrorism campaign.”
“We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately, we’re going to defeat them,” Obama said.
However, the difficulties Washington faces were underlined by a report from a British-based research group that found that IS fighters were using captured US military-issue weapons supplied to other rebel groups in Syria by Saudi Arabia.
Prince Zeid, the first Muslim and Arab to serve as UN high commissioner for human rights, said that IS had already shown the world what its rule would be like if it was left unchecked.
“It would be a harsh, mean-spirited house of blood,” he said in his maiden speech to the UN Human Rights Council.
IS “has demonstrated absolute and deliberate disregard for human rights,” Zeid said, stressing that “the scale of its use of brute violence against ethnic and religious groups is unprecedented in recent times.”
The bloodshed continued yesterday when militants attacked the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, which has held out against their assaults.
Clashes and suicide bombings killed 18 people and wounded more than 50, police and a doctor said.
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