Iraq: Criticism Of U.S. Senate's Partition Resolution Echoes Across Arab World

[Purveyor]

Source: RadioFreeEurope

October 4, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The U.S. Senate's passage of a nonbinding resolution calling for a formal separation of Iraq's 18 governorates into three autonomous regions that would reflect the country's largest ethnicities has sparked a massive outcry both inside Iraq and across the Arab world, with critics suggesting the United States has overstepped its role in Iraq.

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Arousing Sunni Sensibilities

Nevertheless, criticism of the bill has filled editorial pages across the Arab world, and has widely been interpreted as an imperialistic attempt to decide both Iraq's and the region's fate. Iraq's neighboring Arab states, which are dominated by Sunnis already threatened by the rise of a Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad, viewed the resolution as an attempt to further solidify the fragmentation that exists in Iraq today, and by association, influence the future shape and composition of regional states. Radio Free Iraq talked to Iraqi politicians and people on the street for their reactions to the Senate resolution.

The reaction also gives insight into the enormous sensitivity felt in the region to the U.S.-led invasion and the events of the past 4 1/2 years, and how those events have affected the collective psyche of the Arab world and its self-identity, which is deeply rooted in honor, pride, and respect. When Saddam Hussein's regime fell and Sunni Arabs lost their leadership role in Iraqi society, Arabs across the region, whatever their feelings toward Hussein and his regime, believed their honor had been trampled on.

The Shi'ite ascension to power and subsequent events, including the dissolution of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army and the Abu Ghurayb scandal, only furthered the impression that the U.S.-led coalition intended to humiliate Sunni Arabs and dominate them.

In a September 30 editorial titled "Iraq is not an American State," Egypt's state-owned daily "Al-Ahram" praised the Bush administration's stand against the resolution, saying support for the resolution would have led to new "foolish and catastrophic actions" that would speed up the fragmentation of Iraq and spark a wide-scale civil war. The Senate should know "that such a matter is the right of the Iraqis alone, and not the right of the U.S. occupiers of their lands -- unless Congress considers Iraq a new U.S. state," it continued. "It is no justification to claim that this will speed up the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The ones who got these forces trapped in Iraq have to search for a way to hasten their withdrawal other than tearing the Iraqi people apart."



Read more: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/10/770D037B-73B3-45F2-91BB-2456A7AE8318.html

[robinlynne]

1. radiofreeiraq talked to people on the street in iraq. yeah right.

[0007]

3. ....and then cometh the Reservations far away from our OIL

[Middle finga]

2. What the F--K

"Egypt's state-owned daily "Al-Ahram" praised the Bush administration's stand against the resolution"

Did you also praise him for causing all of the chaos in Iraq also? How can any middle eastern country give praise to that imbecile?