February 6, 2007
Sorting out the good guys and the bad guys in the Iraqi government
Today CNN.com informs us that Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, a convicted terrorist, has won a seat on the Iraqi parliament. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed was convicted of bombing the French and American embassies in Kuwait in 1983. This esteemed Iraqi legislator was also involved in the 1984 hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner.
And then there are all the things that we don’t yet know about Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s resume, which are sure to surface in the weeks ahead.
Does Iraqi “democracy” mean legislators who have bombed American embassies in the Middle East? Apparently so. As U.S. troop deaths in Iraq continue to climb, and President Bush asks Congress for an additional $141.7 billion for nation-building in the region, dumfounded Americans understandably ask: How the $%#! did this happen?
Jamal Jafaar Mohammed
The answer is complicated, due to the blurry line between Iraq’s terrorists and Iraq’s mainstream politicians. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed the convicted terrorist is a member of a political party known as al-Dawa. Al-Dawa’s full name is Hizb al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya, or “The Islamic Call.”
Al-Dawa is not some obscure splinter group. The al-Dawa member best known to Westerners is Nouri al-Maliki----who also happens to be the current Prime Minister of Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki visited the White House in July 2006. He even gave a speech at a joint session of Congress.
Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki
The Roots of al-Dawa
Al-Dawa represents the “Shiite majority” that we have been hearing so much about since the invasion of Iraq nearly four years ago. Al-Dawa was founded in the 1950s by a group of Iraqi Shiite clerics who wanted to create an Islamic alternative for the Iraqi political scene---which was then predominantly secular. Al-Dawa also had the objective of giving Iraq’s Shiites a greater role in the government.
Until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq had always been controlled by a Sunni minority. Sunni control of the country began centuries ago, when the Ottoman Empire (a Sunni power) controlled Iraq. Sunni domination continued throughout the entire twentieth century. Since the 1940s, there have been many coups and leaders in Iraq---from a Hashemite monarch, to a neo-Communist general, to the Ba’athist Saddam Hussein---but all of these leaders have been Sunni Muslims.
al-Dawa vs. Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein first became nervous about al-Dawa in 1980. Iraq was then in a war with Shiite Iran; and Saddam feared that al-Dawa members might have mixed loyalties. Saddam’s fears about al-Dawa cannot be entirely written off to a despot’s paranoia. The group was linked to various attacks against the Iraqi government, including an assassination attempt on Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Saddam Hussein outlawed the group, which forced al-Dawa to go underground.
This is where the aforementioned Jamal Jafaar Mohammed comes in. After al-Dawa was effectively driven out of Iraq, the group became a proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was supporting terrorist activities throughout the Middle East. In 1983 al-Dawa bombed a number of targets in Kuwait----and the embassy of the Great Satan was of course high on al-Dawa’s list of targets. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed was involved in these attacks.
Fast-forward to 2003. The United States drives Saddam Hussein out of power, and commits itself to “democracy” in Iraq----which means government by the Shiite majority----which in turn means government by the Islamist al-Dawa party.
Therefore, we should not be too surprised that a convicted terrorist from the 1980s has shown up in the Iraqi government. Iraq’s ruling party is itself an Islamist terrorist organization, even if its members have donned suits and ties for sessions of the Iraqi parliament. Was this unexpected? Jamal Jafaar Mohammed will probably not be the last Iraqi politician to have a terrorist rap sheet.
Notes:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/05/iraq.lawmaker/index.html
