Al-Dari is to Al Qaeda what Gerry Adams is to Sein Fein, the public "acceptable" face of a largely beaten and discredited movement that is capable of little more than *occasional* mild violence against soft targets.
Posted on 04/01/2005 10:41:08 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Sunni Clerics Urge Followers to Join Iraq Army and Police By ROBERT F. WORTH
AGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 - A group of Sunni Arab clerics, including some hard-line figures who fiercely oppose the American presence here, issued a statement on Friday urging their fellow Sunni Arabs to join the Iraqi Army and police.
The edict, signed by 64 imams and religious scholars, was a striking turnaround for the clerics, who have often lashed out in sermons at the fledgling army and police force and branded them collaborators.
Prominently missing from the signers was Harith al-Dari, the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars and one of the most influential Sunni Arab clerics in Iraq, who is said to have close ties to the insurgency.
Still, the directive, which carried the signature of Ahmed Hassan al-Taha, an imam at an important Baghdad mosque who has been a strong critic of the occupation, seemed to represent a significant step.
Many if not most insurgent attacks in recent months have been aimed at the police and army, which are largely composed of Shiites. The cleric who announced the edict, Sheik Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai, said he hoped and believed that the new directive would undercut those attacks.
But Sheik Abdul Ghafour also made clear that the order was aimed at regaining some control over Iraq's new security forces, not saving Shiite lives. Sunni Arabs dominated the higher echelons of the military under Saddam Hussein, and many, enraged by the American decision to dissolve Mr. Hussein's army two years ago, joined the insurgency.
"The new army and police force are empty of good people, and we need to supply them," the edict said. "Because the police and army are a safeguard for the whole nation, not a militia for any special party, we have issued this fatwa calling on our people to join the army and police."
The edict contained a condition seemingly aimed at sweetening the pill for resistant Sunni Arabs: that a new police or army recruit must agree "not to help the occupier against his compatriots."
American and Iraqi officials welcomed the edict as a sign that the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the January elections, are taking steps toward rejoining the country's government and politics.
"It is a positive step," said Saad Jawad Qindeel, a member of the Shiite alliance that won the largest bloc of seats in Iraq's new national assembly in January. "We are hoping the clerics will take an even more definite attitude in preventing terrorism."
Although Sheik Dari of the Association of Muslim Scholars did not sign the edict, Sheik Abdul Ghafour delivered it on Friday at the mosque in western Baghdad that houses the association's headquarters.
It was not clear whether Sheik Dari or the association were offering some tacit support by providing the venue for the announcement. The leaders of the association, like some of the scholars who signed the edict, are widely believed to have some influence over the armed resistance. But it is impossible to say how much.
In the past, members of the association have often complained about injustices committed by Iraqi soldiers and police officers and by the American military. On Thursday, Sheik Abdul Ghafour invoked those injustices as the main reason for issuing the edict.
"The bad conduct of some army recruits has led the wise men and loyal Iraqis to recognize that they must build up this country and not leave things in the hands of those who have caused such chaos and destruction," he said.
New details emerged Friday about the jailed Jordanian-American who is said to have been a senior aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's representative in Iraq. The man was born in Kuwait to Jordanian parents but moved with his family to the United States, where he spent about 20 years, mostly in the Midwest, Pentagon officials said. He moved to the Middle East a few years before the Sept. 11 attacks and was seized late last year at his home in Baghdad, along with weapons and bomb-making materials, the officials said.
Pentagon officials said the man had acted as a liaison with other terrorist groups, moved money and foreign fighters into Iraq and helped in the planning and execution of kidnappings by the Zarqawi network.
Violence continued to roil central and northern Iraq. In Baquba, north of Baghdad, gunmen assassinated a police chief, Col. Hashem Rashid Muhammad, as he arrived at a police station late Thursday night, Iraqi officials said.
In Samarra, an ancient spiral minaret that is one of Iraq's most celebrated monuments was damaged Friday when insurgents set off an explosion, American military officials said. The top of the 160-foot tower, built in the ninth century when Samarra was the capital of the Abbasid Empire, was blown away in the attack. No one was injured, and the Iraqi police are investigating the incident, said Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo of the United States Army, a military spokeswoman.
East of Samarra, Iraqi police commandos and Interior Ministry officers killed five insurgents and detained two in a fierce gun battle early Friday morning, Sergeant Lombardo said.
In Baghdad, American soldiers opened fire on a car that tried to pass them on the airport road, killing one Iraqi and injuring two, officials at Yarmuk Hospital said. American military officials said they were not aware of the incident.
In Mosul, fliers appeared on Friday warning members of one of the city's most prominent tribes to stop working with Americans. The fliers were addressed to the tribe by the Zarqawi network. They warned members of the Kashmola tribe to force Duraid al-Kashmola, Mosul's governor, to leave the city or face retribution against all the tribe's members.
Talks continued Friday among members of the newly elected national assembly, who plan to meet and try to choose an assembly speaker on Sunday.
Meshaan al-Juburi, a Sunni assembly member, warned Friday that Sunni members would walk out if the Shiite alliance insisted on electing its own Sunni candidate as speaker. But Shiite alliance members have said they have no intention of imposing a speaker on the assembly.
Khalid al-Ansary and Zaineb Obeid contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
The NYT also just reported the following: Sheik Harith al-Dari said he would continue to view the armed resistance in Iraq as legitimate until the U.S. military offered a timetable for its withdrawal. Al-Dari wants to remake Iraq into the political structure of Saudi Arabia but now finds himself as a big fish in an increasingly smaller and more discredited pond.
Al-Dari is to Al Qaeda what Gerry Adams is to Sein Fein, the public "acceptable" face of a largely beaten and discredited movement that is capable of little more than *occasional* mild violence against soft targets.
Yup, al-Dari's problem is that he resists the growing Iraqi nationalism as shown by the Shias that will soon dominate Iraqi government policy. He looks too hard headed to be effective at representing many Sunnis in the future and is becoming more marginalized. His call to boycott the elections really fouled up the Sunnis and they know it. What is interesting to me is the many Sunnis who voted anyway. Seems that al-Dari's support is paper thin among Sunnis at large and he has little rapport with Zarqawi's loony-tune Salafists.
I tend to agree. If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them.
LOL. That's exactly what I was thinking as I read the article and it was the first comment posted. This is yet another vindication of the Bush policy of spreading democracy.
Sunni Clerics Urge Followers to Join Iraq Army and Police
the next Saddam is now a captain or major.
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