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DEL.ICIO.USPullout votes scare mayor of Iraqi city
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The politics unfolding in the U.S. Congress frighten the mayor of this northwestern Iraq city almost as much as the multiple bombings and revenge killings that shattered the calm here this week.
“The situation right now would be out of control if it weren’t for American presence here,” Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri says. “Whoever denies this fact knows nothing.”
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| “It is the Iraqis who will pay the ultimate price for American politics,” Tal Afar Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri said in an interview. |
He has said it before. On Friday, he utters the statement again with new urgency surfacing in his voice after days of carnage.
His remarks are aimed at Washington lawmakers who want President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The Senate voted 51-47 Thursday on a war funding bill that included a provision calling for withdrawals to begin this year, with the goal of bringing all soldiers home in a year.
That makes Jibouri nervous.
“I know what’s-her-name, Hillary Clinton, knows very well that Bush is on the right track, but she has to oppose him because of the elections,” Jibouri says, taking a jab at Democrats who support the troop drawdown. “I am telling you that it is the Iraqis who will pay the ultimate price for American politics.”
Jibouri tried to console the inconsolable this week, meeting with mostly Shiite survivors of a massive truck bombing and Sunni families who lost fathers and sons in a reprisal rampage.
More than 85 people, including many children, died when a flour truck exploded in a busy marketplace. In the aftermath, gunmen shot 70 Sunni men execution style.
Jibouri says Iraqi security forces are nowhere near ready to maintain order in Iraq, as was evidenced in Tal Afar this week. On Friday, 18 Iraqi police officers were charged in murders of Sunnis.
He blames U.S. administrators for disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003 and says it will be another two years before the fledgling replacement forces will be able to stand on their own. For America to pull the plug now, he says, would result in nothing short of “catastrophe.”
He has told Bush that himself —- twice, in fact —- in letters, so far unanswered, that he says he sent to the White House after Bush, in a speech a year ago, touted Tal Afar as a model for freedom and security in Iraq.
But just as the Americans are racing against time here, so is the central government in Baghdad, Jibouri says. It must prove it is a secular entity able to keep sectarian power plays in check if Iraq is to succeed in quelling sectarian strife, he says.
His spirits visibly lowered by the bloodshed, Jibouri says he and other community leaders are determined not to let this week’s setback detract from the fight against terrorism, which he believes has been inflicted on Iraq by surrounding nations.
In an Internet statement, the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella group of terrorist organizations that include al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the Tal Afar suicide bombings.
Jibouri defended the Iraqi police in his town, saying “a few bad apples” are tarnishing the reputation of the entire force. He calls the revenge killings inexcusable, but offers a reason for why they might have taken place. He says savage acts can beget other acts that are equally brutal.
He compares Tal Afar’s violence to the blackout and ensuing chaos in New York City in 1977.
“All hell broke out in that city then,” he says. “We didn’t have a blackout here. We had whole families wiped out. What would your reaction be if your entire family was killed?”
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