Iraq clerics call for calm after bombing The Associated Press .. December 12, 2008
KIRKUK, Iraq: Muslim clerics appealed for calm Friday, one day after a suicide bomber killed 55 people — including women and children — at a local restaurant in the deadliest attack in Iraq in six months.
The attack appeared aimed at a meeting of local Kurdish, Arab and Turkomen leaders who had gathered at the Abdullah restaurant to discuss ways to reduce ethnic tension in this oil-rich city.
But many of the victims had simply come to the restaurant with their families to celebrate the end of the four-day Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.
"Yesterday, the terrorists killed innocent people regardless of their religious and ethnic background," Serwan Ahmed, a Kurdish preacher, told 900 worshippers at the Iskan mosque.
"Thus, all the groups living in Kirkuk should be united and work together to enhance peace and solidarity. We must deprive the terrorists from the chance to create more tension in the city," he added.
At another mosque, preacher Hussein Zangana said al-Qaida "murdered" people who were simply enjoying the religious holiday.
"The terrorists are trying to kill innocent people whether they are Kurds or Arabs," he said.
Most of the victims were buried late Thursday. In keeping with local customs, neighbors of the dead joined families of the victims in digging graves in city cemeteries.
By Friday morning, however, markets and restaurants were open again. Black banners hung on many walls, serving as a grim reminder of the bombing.
The deadly attack occurred at a time of tension between Kurds and Arabs over Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's northern oil fields. Kurds want to annex Kirkuk and surrounding Tamim province into their self-ruled region of northern Iraq.
Most Turkomen and Arabs want the province to remain under central government control, fearing the Kurds would discriminate against them.
Iraq's parliament exempted the Kirkuk area from provincial elections to be held on Jan. 31 because the different ethnic groups could not agree on how to share power.
President Jalal Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, sponsored the reconciliation luncheon. Talabani had planned to meet with the group later in the day.
The president, who is Kurdish, later issued a statement saying that the "terrorists and their groups" would never "destroy the great security gains achieved across the country."
Among the dead was a locally popular Turkomen singer who was killed along with his three children, newly married brother and sister-in-law.
Kanaan Mohammed Saleh, 39, who hosted a show called "The Sweet Voice" on a Kurdish television channel, had been invited to the restaurant to attend the reconciliation meeting.
He took his wife, Bushra, three young children and his newly married brother and sister-in-law. All were killed except the wife, who was seriously injured, according to the singer's brother Karim Mohammed Saleh.
"We never expected such a thing to happen, especially at a restaurant outside the city," the brother said as he received mourners at a funeral tent. "After this loss, life has become without meaning or taste for me. I cannot cope with this disaster."
Lt. Col. David Doherty, spokesman for U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said the bomber used a suicide vest packed with metal to maximize casualties. The bomber apparently detonated the vest near a fountain at the center of the main dining area where most of the people were killed, he said.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but U.S. officials suspected al-Qaida in Iraq. Two other groups that operate in the north, Ansar al-Sunnah and Ansar al-Islam, have used suicide attacks during the five-year war.
Provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Jamal Tahir said the identity of the bomber and details about how he managed to pass the checkpoints leading to the restaurant were under investigation.
"We know that al-Qaida is always trying to find and make use of weak points in any security system," he said.
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
A poster depicting radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr shares space with campaign posters for candidates …
Iraq – Followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr hope to win back their position as a major force in this month's regional elections after a string of military and political setbacks last year.
Even modest success in the Jan. 31 vote for ruling provincial councils could position the Sadrists as coalition partners in key southern provinces, where a large number of candidates makes it unlikely any single party can win on its own.
Anything short of that could relegate the once formidable al-Sadr to political irrelevance — something unthinkable a year ago when his fearsome Mahdi Army militia wielded vast power in Shiite areas of Iraq.
"This month's elections will decide who remains in the political arena and who will go into oblivion," said senior Sadrist lawmaker Hassan al-Rubaie. "If we fail to do well, our movement could fragment, and some of its key figures could be lured away by rival blocs trying to destroy us."
Top Sadrist officials in key southern cities — Basra, Amarah and Najaf — spoke confidently about their election prospects during interviews with The Associated Press.
But they fear that authorities may step up arrests of al-Sadr's supporters and campaign workers in response to his call for attacks on U.S. forces in retaliation for Israel's offensive in Gaza.
The Sadrists also face a strong threat from the country's two largest Shiite parties — the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Both are vigorously campaigning to retain their grip on the south and prevent any inroads by al-Sadr's group, which has been significantly weakened since the heady days when it held sway in Shiite areas of Baghdad and southern Iraq.
Hundreds of its key members have been detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces over the past two years — especially after the government crackdown on militias in Baghdad and Basra last spring.
The Mahdi Army, which battled the Americans for years, has been riveted with divisions. The militiamen's former image as the defender of the Shiites has been tarnished among many urban Shiites who consider them gangsters.
The Sadrists' best chance for success could be in Amarah, an oil-rich area near the Iranian border that had been controlled by the cleric's followers before the crackdown last year. The Sadrists remain in control of the provincial council of Maysan, the province of which Amarah is the capital.
"The Sadrist movement will be in a bad situation if we lose Amarah," said Hassan al-Husseini, al-Sadr's chief representative in Amarah, 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad.
"But other groups are determined to oust us from Amarah," he said, squatting on the floor beneath a larger-than-life portrait of al-Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was gunned down by suspected Saddam Hussein agents in 1999.
As in previous elections, no candidates are running explicitly as followers of al-Sadr. They are nominally independent — but the movement makes sure that voters know which candidates it supports.
Winning about a third of the council seats in the nine southern provinces would be considered a success, said Salah al-Obeidi, al-Sadr's chief spokesman. The movement wants to prevent the other Shiite parties from winning enough seats to monopolize power, he said.
"Our ultimate goal is not to allow governors to do as they please," al-Obeidi said at his Najaf office.
The Sadrists, whose movement began in the 1990s, emerged as a formidable political and social force after U.S. troops overthrew Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime in 2003.
They survived a 2004 uprising against the Americans after the powerful Shiite clergy intervened to prevent al-Sadr's arrest. Al-Maliki's predecessor, Ibrahim al- Jaafari, brought Sadrists into the government, giving them several Cabinet posts.
But the Sadrists did not field a full slate of candidates in the last provincial elections four years ago, leaving the south to the Supreme Council, Dawa and regional groups.
Two years ago, it appeared that the Sadrists, who draw strength from millions of impoverished Shiites, would threaten the position of the two major Shiite parties because of complaints of bad governance in the south.
But a series of missteps cost the movement dearly.
Sadrist ministers pulled out of al-Maliki's Cabinet in 2007 to protest his cooperation with the U.S., depriving the movement much of its influence in government. The move also angered al-Maliki, who ordered U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last year into Basra, the Baghdad district of Sadr City and other areas to wrest control from al-Sadr's militia.
Al-Sadr himself moved to Iran two years ago, weakening his leadership at a time his movement needed him most.
The Sadrists' appeal to voters has been their uncompromising anti-American stand, social welfare programs for the poor and the prestige of al-Sadr's late father, who defended Shiite rights when few would speak out under Saddam.
"We are proud of our opposition to the (U.S.) occupation," said Ayed al-Mayahi, al-Sadr's representative in Basra. "Everything that has happened to us was the price we paid for that stand."
Saudi shake-up aims to ease Islamist hold Paul Handley .. February 19, 2009
Saudi King Abdullah's government reshuffle is a full-scale assault on ultra-conservative Islamists who have locked up the country's education and justice systems, Saudi and foreign experts believe. More than three years after becoming king, 84-year-old Abdullah has moved to confront the challenge of a huge youth demographic that, if not provided with modern schooling and jobs, could become tinder for movements like Al-Qaeda, they said.
These are radical and fundamental changes, which the Saudis have hoped for for a long time," Abdallah Al-Oteibi, a specialist on Islamist groups, told AFP. In his sweeping shake-up announced on Saturday, the king replaced four cabinet ministers, notably those for justice and education, and the head of nearly every key justice-related body. These institutions included the Supreme Judicial Council, the Ulema Council of the highest clerics, the consultative Shura Council, the Supreme Court, and Umm al-Qura, the Islamic university in Mecca.
While sacking the chief of the Muttawa morality police and naming Saudi Arabia's first-ever woman to ministerial rank grabbed the headlines, analysts say his education and justice changes were far more important. "What the king has done is pretty amazing," said Christopher Boucek, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "The king has been trying to force his will, the government's will on institutions that had been working independently," he told AFP.
His education appointments show Abdullah's seriousness in reforming a bureaucracy where conservatives had stymied efforts to bring curriculums into the 21st century, rid textbooks of passages demonising non-Muslims, and provide ample opportunities for women. The education system "had been dominated by radicals who were responsible for ideas of intolerance and extremism being taught to students," said political scientist Turki Al-Hamad.
The new education minister is the king's son-in-law, Prince Faisal, whose previous job was number two in the intelligence directorate. His wife is Princess Adila, a leading force for women's rights and opportunities, modern education and health services and protection of children. Named deputy minister was royal adviser Faisal bin Muaammer, who ran the Centre for National Dialogue which Abdullah has cannily used to raise and debate reform issues and thus identify capable reformers and points of resistance, analysts believe.
The new woman deputy education minister, Norah Al-Fayez, is a veteran educationalist who has also fostered some of the agenda identified with Princess Adila. Together all of them have years of experience dealing with the education system, a western expert in Riyadh said. "Now they know the structure, who are the problems," he added. Ultimately, experts believe, Abdullah is completely conscious of the challenge of providing livings to a growing population that in 2006 was 33 percent aged 15 or less, and that requires education and jobs in modern industries to ensure future stability.
The king also took his broom to the justice system, almost completely controlled by clerics with free rein to interpret Islamic texts and tradition. This left the system with no formal body of precedents, inconsistent definitions of crime and inconsistent punishments. It also allowed judges to ignore recently drafted laws on court procedure and defendants' rights.
The main replacement was of Sheikh Saleh Al-Luhaidan, head of the Supreme Judicial Council for more than four decades. Its new head is Saleh bin Humaid, who as outgoing leader of the legislature-like Shura Council advanced the king's program. The Shura will now be led by outgoing justice minister Sheikh Abdullah Al-Sheikh, another royal confidant whose job will be to guide the council in crafting legal reforms, analysts say.
Meanwhile a relative progressive was named to lead the Ulema Council, which will also include, for the first time, representatives of all four Sunni schools of religious law. Previously only the ultra-conservative Hanbali school which dominates the Saudi version of Islam was represented. Analysts believe the abruptness of Abdullah's shake-up came only after years of cautious study of what he wanted to do, and after making his general agenda known and watching what happened. The king is "attacking rigidity of thought" in the government, said one westerner who has followed Saudi politics for years. "He wanted to change the policies and the people did not do it for him." - AFP
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