Iraq Press Roundup

The daily Al Sabaah newspaper said Friday in its editorial that observers of the political process in Iraq today cannot illustrate it or acknowledge its aims or intentions, which turns the process of analyzing it into something close to a guessing game.

The editorial titled "Coded politics" said that one reason it is so difficult to analyze the political process in Iraq is the lack of trust among the components of the Iraqi society, whether in terms of the rulers or the ruled.

"The climax of the sectarian divisions is represented by the mistrust politicians felt toward each other. So, instead of appointing the right people to the right positions, politicians made appointments to government posts on a sectarian basis, fearing that people from other sects or ethnicities would turn against them."

The sectarian division has chained all three branches of government -- the executive, judicial and legislative -- and paralyzed them, the newspaper said.

Such chains have caused delays in making key decisions, especially those needing immediate responses such as the deteriorating security situation, the editorial said.

Getting rid of the dictatorship in Iraq was followed by the worst series of terrorist attacks in the world -- violence fed by sectarian divisions, the editorial said.

It said that Iraqi government members use sectarian labels in referring to each other.

"The Shiite prime minister, the Sunni deputy and the Kurdish president are sectarian adjectives, creating sectarian strife among the Iraqi people," rather than seeking to ameliorate them.

The editorial said that politics in current Iraq is close to a "coded politics" that nobody can understand except those who set it up.

"The codes of politics need to be opened so that people of Iraq know what is taking place on their land. ... Today, the Kurdish politicians fear the Shiites and the Sunnis, and the latter fear the Kurdish Peshmerga, while the Sunni politicians fear the Shiite death squads and the Shiite politicians fear the Saddamists," it said.

It also said that there is a regional fear that Iraqi politicians are concerned about.

"The Kurdish politicians' main goal is to try to push away the threat coming from Turkey, the Sunni politicians focus on dealing with the 'threat' presented by Iraq's eastern neighbor, Iran; leaving the Shiite politicians fearful of the Syrian and Saudi Arabian Sunnis," it added.

The editorial also said that Iraqi politicians' fears about the future are based in their obsessions with the past.

"The Shiites are afraid of exclusion and marginalization after 35 years of Sunni-ruled Iraq, the Sunnis don't want to be the losers of the game that they played and 'won' for 35 years, and the Kurds were and always are suspicious of the role the central government might have, fearing (a repeat of) the genocidal experiments of (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein's regime."

What is being discussed is only a diagnosis of the current state of affairs in Iraq which actually needs immediate treatment before it is too late.

The editorial concluded that the best treatment would be for the different sectors of Iraqi society, whether the public or the government and politicians, not to be afraid of each other, or of neighboring countries, or of past concerns, or of future obsessions; and for the politicians of all sides and factions to share one table in order to reconcile before the benefits of getting rid of Saddam's dictatorship fade and never come back.

"If it wasn't for the Sept. 11 attacks, removing Saddam Hussein from power would have been a dream impossible to bring to reality," said the paper.